Released here mere months following Hany Abu-Assad’s masterpiece Omar – which focused on the Israeli-Palestianin conflict from the Palestinian side – comes Rock The Casbah, an equally masterful meditation on the conflict, but this time from the Israeli side. Like Omar, Rock The Casbah rightfully doesn’t dwell on the insane politics (other than to point out the absurdity of it) and focuses on the people at the centre of its story and how the politics affects them. Also like Omar, it depicts the shared anger of all involved and the perpetuation of violence that has characterized the conflict since its beginning.
Following a squad of Israeli soldiers dispatched to the Gaza Strip in 1989 (in a moment of painful irony one declares that their mission will be finished in ‘a couple of days’), the film ultimately tells the story of the squad and their interactions with the locals who don’t want them there. When one of them is killed from a refrigerator thrown off a roof, a segment of the squad is sent to the rooftop to guard against further attacks. Tension mounts between the soldiers and the community; the people whose home they’ve taken over; and between the soldiers themselves.
Like Omar, the foreign and under-utilized setting provides a visually rich environment which director Yariv Horowitz exploits to its full potential. His camera, often hand-held, perfectly captures the exotic locale and frames the drama expertly without becoming intrusive. The screenplay (which Horowitz co-wrote with Guy Meirson) immediately establishes the conflict before slowly peeling back the layers of the characters who are thrown into it.
The performances are uniformly strong from a cast of mostly unknowns with little experience. Yon Tumarkin as Tomer, the soldier who is perhaps given the most attention throughout the film (although it would be a stretch to consider him the main character when so much attention is given to the rest of his unit), is particularly good as his mental health deteriorates in the chaos of the situation.
The film also includes a particularly touching scene when the father of the killed solider is brought to the rooftop and shown how his son died. Instead of blaming the Palestinians he turns on the commander of the platoon and screams at him in a sentiment expressing war all over the world: “Why did you bring my son here? What did he die for?”.
Rock The Casbah is a gripping and harrowingly depicted narrative, which like Omar, should not be missed. A masterpiece.
Rock the Casbah is in selected cinemas from July 3 through Classic Cinemas.
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