A young Israeli soldier deserts his unit during a Gaza incursion in Dani Rosenberg’s absorbing sophomore feature, The Vanishing Soldier. Propelled forward by the protagonist’s need to constantly be on the move, first in Gaza and then his familiar Tel Aviv haunts, the film boasts of a number of superb scenes and is extremely well cast, most especially young Ido Tako as the soldier Shlomi and Efrat Ben Zur as his mother Rachel. Unquestionably an anti-war film critical of Israel’s brutal occupation, The Vanishing Soldier is also a movie that stays very much on the Israeli side of things, so what audiences get out of it will largely depend on their previously established sympathies.
Powerful images kick things off as an army unit shacked up in a half-destroyed Palestinian home use red lights on their helmets to cut through the darkness, punctuated by rocket blasts seen through a blown-out wall. Soldiers with their faces blacked up sleep against a wall, looking like a bronze war memorial rather than breathing men until they’re roused to evacuate. One private, Shlomi, is slow to stir and then hides behind an upright mattress after everyone else is gone. At daylight he looks to get out of Gaza, avoiding both soldiers and a group of Palestinian children who scurry away like piglets, until he takes the car of a man lying dead on the street and drives out of Gaza.
Shlomi’s escape – from the fighting, his duties, his rigidly proscribed place in Israeli society – doesn’t appear to be a premeditated one and he has no plan other than fleeing an intolerable situation. With jazz percussion accompanying his nervous flight, Shlomi first heads to his parents’ house in Tel Aviv and then, when he doesn’t find them home, heads to the fancy restaurant where his girlfriend Shiri (Mika Reiss) works as a sous-chef. He moves to not get caught and he moves because if he stops for a moment he’ll need to think about the consequences of what he’s done: at 18-years-old he may have a rifle in his hands but he’s not got the maturity that should go with a deadly weapon. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Stock your armies with kids and train them not to think for themselves.
On the beach he befriends and then steals clothes and a phone from a couple of naïve French tourists (Claude Aviram, Johanne Toledano) who spout the knee-jerk Zionism of most Jewish visitors, and returns to see Shiri, trying to convince her not to emigrate to Canada. He’s in love, the love of a late teen, and while he may convince himself that he’s deserted to be with Shiri, the truth is rather more complicated. Next stop after seeing grandma (Tiki Dayan as the kind of grandmother whose love is all-embracing, notwithstanding dementia) is the hospital once he learns his father Yoel (Shmulik Cohen) had a heart attack following a rocket attack.
In one of the film’s best sequences, Shlomi’s mother Rachel receives a call from the army asking if she’s heard from her son. Keeping it a secret from her sick husband, she questions Shlomi, who first lies and then tells her he’s deserted. Trying to protect her kid while persuading him to go back, she calmly receives a small army delegation at the hospital’s outdoor seating area while Shlomi watches from the street – Nili Feller’s editing here is excellent – only to learn the army thinks her son’s been kidnapped by Hamas.
Rosenberg cogently captures the potent schizophrenia of Tel Aviv, a cosmopolitan city that acts as if it’s somehow apart from the effects of the Occupation, no matter how many reminders arrive via TV, radio, messages and the occasional rocket attack. For many, the metropolis offers a protective bubble of like-minded middle class bon vivants, but Shlomi is on the run even more now that news has broken that a soldier has been kidnapped. For the most part the taut script maintains the required sense of propulsion (the return of the French tourists however is a misstep) until the end, when two scenarios suddenly come into play, as if Rosenberg can’t quite decide which to choose nor which to signal as simply inside Shlomi’s head.
Despite this late unwanted ambiguity, The Vanished Soldier remains a compelling watch. Reportage overheard on radio and TV gives only the official government version of events, which of course is how most Israelis get their information, though sticking to IDF propaganda eliminates Palestinian suffering and deaths – audiences need to bring their own understanding of the situation to appreciate that the reality for the Occupiers is far less horrific than for the Occupied. It’s because of the impossibility of this situation that young soldiers like Shlomi crack, unable to tolerate their actions.
Press notes make no mention of d.o.p. David Stragmeister’s choices, but there occasionally appears to be some kind of speed manipulation, creating a barely perceptible staccato effect at times. Overall the visuals are considerably more polished than Rosenberg’s first feature, The Death of Cinema and My Father Too, which was more of a hybrid, making Vanishing Soldier a worthy calling card to attract future projects. Yuval Semo’s jazz score is generally well-placed, though sometimes it feels forced when the film is doing an excellent job on its own of moving things forward at a nervy pace.
Director: Dani Rosenberg
Screenplay: Dani Rosenberg, Amir Kliger
Cast: Ido Tako, Mika Reiss, Efrat Ben Zur, Tiki Dayan, Shmulik Cohen, Claude Aviram, Johanne Toledano
Producers: Avraham Pirchi, Chilik Michaeli, Itamar Pirchi
Cinematography: David Stragmeister
Production designer: Ben-Zion Porat
Costume designer: Ofri Barel
Editing: Nili Feller
Music: Yuval Semo
Sound: Neal Gibbs, Michael Stoliar
Production companies: UCM Films (Israel)
World sales: Intramovies
Venue: Locarno (International competition)
In Hebrew, English
96 minutes
