War and Peace

It is said that history is written by the victors, but in the "victory picture" Avi Nesher tells the war of liberation from two points of view - the Israeli and the Egyptian.

Doubling the perspective doubles the emotional intensity and depth of the result, turning it from just a good movie into a huge, one-time movie

Avner Shavit

23/12/2021

Thursday, 23 December 2021, 00:00 Updated: 22:35

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Star rating for movies - 5 stars (Photo: image processing,.)

One week ago, the Habima Theater presented Avi Nesher with the "Israeli Hero of Culture Award." In doing so, the director completed his journey into the heart of the Israeli mainstream - a journey that began in 1978 with his first film, "The Band". Unlike other local films made at the time, he did not deal with a combat unit but with a military band, and even in later years, the prolific filmmaker did not turn to the battlefield. His works have dealt with national issues such as the Holocaust and immigration, but not with war.

Nesher is only doing so now, a year before his seventieth birthday, in his new film "The Picture of Victory" which came up here over the weekend, after many postponements due to the corona. The film deals with warriors, warriors and war - the War of Independence, which has not received many representations on the local screen, certainly not in recent years.

It is said that history is written by the winners.

In light of the name of the film, it could be assumed that it would present the story from the Israeli point of view, but in fact, Nesher chose to add the Egyptian perspective to it as well.

The scene is Kibbutz Nitzanim, which at least as described here, was supposed to be a marginal point on the map on a large scale of the '48 war, but has become a strategic destination.

It happens when the Egyptians, already knowing that they are going to lose, attack him in order to produce the picture of victory as the film is called.

The person who is asked to take this picture is Muhammad Hassanin Heichel, a journalist who directs heroic propaganda films in the service of the king.

And even more than photography, its important task is editing, which arranges the raw materials so that the Egyptian army will look like a winner.

Alan Delon's Charm.

Amir Khoury from "The Picture of Victory" (Photo: Amit Yasur)

Hassanin Heichel is a figure who really was, and after the war and after the revolution one of his associates became Nasser and Sadat. The Israeli point of view is also represented by a character who operated in reality - a wireless named Mira Ben-Ari. The director has always placed female characters at the center of his films, and does so here as well. This move makes "The Picture of Victory" one of the only films in the history of Israeli cinema that featured a woman fighting in the heart of the plot.

The Egyptian hero is played by Amir Khoury, who now also stars in the play "Live Fence." This is his first major cinematic role, and he does it with a presence and charm reminiscent of 1960s French movie stars. We will not be surprised if he himself comes to France and also to Hollywood in the coming years. Mira Ben-Ari is played by Joy Rieger. This is already her third film with Nesher, after "The Sins" and "Another Story." This time, as befits a film called "The Picture of Victory," the camera focuses on its face, illustrating just how cinematic a face it is. The young actress is now also starring in the show "The Seagull", in TV series and basically everywhere possible, which is her best role so far. She is also responsible for the fact that the film is progressing towards such an exciting catharsis.

Nesher used to joke that the auditions for his films are so comprehensive that they are a kind of population register.

In "Victory Picture" the joke already becomes half-truth.

In addition to the pair of heroes, it has many other sub-characters - so many, that it seems that almost every Jewish and Arab actor who was available came to the filming.

The sheet is short, but it should be noted that Eliana Tidhar, Meshi Kleinstein, Neta Roth, Tom Avni, Ala Deka and Yadin Gelman stand out, and they are all excellent.

It is also interesting to note that in terms of the age range of the characters, this is the film with the youngest average age that Nesher has made since "The Band", including one of the youngest films currently on the screens - even more than "Spider-Man: No Way Home".

Not only are most of the heroes here really children, but there are almost no key figures of responsible adults overseeing them.

All this reminds us how soft in age the founders of the state were.

Sex, Zionism and rock 'n' roll.

From "The Picture of Victory" (Photo: Amit Yasur)

It's not easy to move between all these characters and two points of view, but the director manages to orchestrate it. He began his film career at the age of 24, exactly the age of the Egyptian filmmaker here, and has now reached the peak of his mastery of the means of cinematic expression, chief among them camera, editing and music. Whether it is in the many battle scenes, or in more intimate classes, for example the moment when warriors and warriors gather to sing "Bella Chao", "Victory Picture" is always impressive and sweeping. Both when the ball is in the Egyptian court and when it passes to the Israeli side, the film manages to maintain balance.

Nesher could have chosen to focus only on the Israeli story, since it also has enough meat to hold a film, but he decided to expand the fan, and this bold bet succeeded. The dual perspective doubles the epic volume of the film, its emotional power and the plot, human and political depths it has. It turns it from just a good film into a huge, unique and one-time film in the Israeli cinema landscape,And to the pinnacle of Nesher's work so far.

Because of the skipping between the Egyptian and Israeli characters, "Victory Picture" combines Hebrew and Arabic.

In addition, it also has quite a few dialogues in Spanish and other languages ​​spoken by the immigrants who came to Israel at that time.

In fact, English is almost non-existent here, but because of its epic dimension, it is a Hollywood movie in its DNA: not contemporary Hollywood, but Hollywood of the fifties and nineties, where it was customary to make such epics.

The irony is, that there is no chance that in today's American film industry, where Spider-Man leaves no room for anything else, they will make such works so that only outside America can they still be produced (and that too will change soon).

Excerpt from the movie "The Picture of Victory" (United King)

"Victory Picture", in short, is a kind of modern incarnation of films like "Exodus", and here the irony comes into play, because the Hollywood film was considered completely pro-Israel and biased towards the Zionist story, while the language of the picture is much more complex.

Asaig and says that despite all this, it is a comfortable film for the Israeli audience - in the end, we leave here as winners.

I have no doubt at all that in other circumstances, in a world without Corona, "Victory Picture" would have become Nesher's box office film since "End of the World Left" and reached half a million viewers.

It is not known what will happen now.

It is to be hoped that as many audiences as possible will see it now, but even if not - I also have no doubt that it will remain a film for generations, because of the story it tells and because of the way it does it, and more will be watched and discussed.

The Israeli and non-Israeli version of "Exodus".

From "The Picture of Victory" (Photo: Iris Nesher)

"Victory Picture" is a cinematic time machine that, through a detailed and glorious period reconstruction, allows us to experience in an incredibly vivid way the lives of the people who lived, loved and died here.

In addition, it is a reminder of how terrible the war between us and Egypt would have been, and how many more casualties we would have paid had it not been for the peace agreement in the late 1970s.

Fate wished and this agreement was signed exactly a year after Nesher began his film career.

And today, when he is no longer a young and anonymous creator but an Israeli cultural symbol, he goes back and creates a war film to mention the importance of peace.

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• Avi Nesher

• Joy Rieger

• War of Independence

• Eliana Tidhar