chong_an
As others have pointed out, this is a 3-act film. Act 1 provides a chilling view of the military precision of the Israeli military's process for informing a family of a tragedy. Act 2 provides a view of Foxtrot outpost, a checkpoint guarding some deserted road. There is the general boredom, combined with occasions of high anxiety, where any car to be checked could have suicide bombers. In Act 3, the family's unsuccessful attempt to see their son's body leads to more drama, with an ending that I consider too neat - hence my low score on the movie.
jbbershon
I saw this film at the 2017 Telluride Film Festival. This film is about the war machine of a country that has been continuously at war.
The way families of those killed were treated with machine like efficiency was quite shocking. There are light moments in the film about boredom of serving in the military and how terrible mistakes are made and covered up. This Israeli film is about its continuous conflict, but it could have easily been an American film.
Jim Bershon
Nozz
Neither side behaved well in the Israeli controversy over Foxtrot. The Minister of Culture condemned the movie without seeing it, and the filmmakers tried to weasel out by claiming surrealism as a form of artistic license. The film isn't surrealistic, although it's expressionistic.The first section is the most expressionistic, packed with overhead shots that feature a weirdly patterned floor. For a while, you wonder whether master actor Lior Ashkenazi has been handed the challenge of playing his part with no lines at all as his character receives and absorbs the notification that his son has fallen in the line of duty. That turns out not to be the case, but to an extent he does remain, throughout this section, a kind of Everyman defined by his situation rather than by any specific background we're aware of. The second section is what made the Minister of Culture grumpy. It shows a soldier making an error of split-second judgment with terrible consequences, followed by a cover-up. The accusation against the movie was that such things don't happen in the Israeli army. I was less disturbed by the soldier's error (people are people), and even by the cover-up (bureaucracies are bureaucracies) than by the coverer-up, an officer made to look like a boulder- bodied ogre. He seems to taint everyone with evil, and coincidentally or not, his appearance marks the point where the movie-- in my opinion-- loses its footing.The first and second sections hinted at intriguing parallels between the generations, as well as a sense of recurring themes, but the third section invests in effortfully tying together what didn't need any such effort and in driving the plot forward past where it could have gracefully ended. It was a little like hearing a joke explained after you've already laughed at it, although Foxtrot certainly doesn't abound in laughs. It's a well-acted, philosophically contemplative film that just goes on for a little too long.
figaropes
Foxtrot is a movie about fate, life, death, war, youth, love and dancing. Flawless beauty resides in almost every aspect of the film; the amazing direction, vivid cinematography and incredibly intense acting perfectly portrait a fabulous 3-act tragedy. This film is a joy to watch and a terrific work of art.
AD
