ONG H U4
FINE CHINESE DINING
twite,s, Tow %,
'A wonderful adventure in fine dining"
within a millimeter of his spine. His
war is over.
But Kippur is more than a combat
movie, and the title itself conveys dif-
ferent layers of meaning. Most com-
monly, kippur means "atonement," as
in the Day of Atonement that gave the
war its name.
The root word also alludes to the
casting of lots, as in the Jewish holiday
of Purim, and stands for the unpre-
dictable chances of life and death in
war. The word also connotes reconcili-
ation, says Gitai.
Despite headlines reporting daily vio-
lence between Israelis and Palestinians,
Gitai still can trace a psychological
thread from confrontation to peace.
"The overwhelming feeling when
you're in war is not hatred, bravery or
even fear, but utter fatigue," he says. "In
this film, its not only physical fatigue,
because you're running and carrying
people, but also emotional fatigue
because you see such terrible things.
That's at the heart of my war experience.
"Wars come to an end not because
of the wisdom of statesmen, but
because everybody just feels wiped
out. When enough people have died,
they see the waste of it, they stretch
out their arms and say, 'Let's do some-
thing else with our lives."'
That, says the director, is the deep-
est meaning of Kippur, and in it lies
the ultimate hope for peace in the
Middle East.
"The final peace agreement, when it
comes, will be hailed as a triumph of
diplomacy, but it will have been dic-
tated by fatigue," Gitai says. "We are
doomed to have peace."
Gitai is a stocky man with curly black
hair, whose youthful looks belie his 50
years and harrowing war experiences.
His father was an architect of the
Bauhaus school, one of the Nazis' first
targets in 1933, and Amos planned a
similar career. After earning a doctor-
ate in architecture at the University of
California at Berkeley, however, he
gravitated toward filmmaking.
His academic background, he
believes, helps him to impose a certain
structure and shape on diverse, often
contradictory, material.
He started his cinematic career in
1980 with a trilogy — a format he
still favors — for Israeli television. He
ran into trouble almost immediately.
In the three documentaries —
House, Wadi ("Valley") and Field Diary
— "I tried to show that Palestinians
have the same attachment to the land
as Israelis," Gitai says.
Israeli television executives refused
to air the films, according to Gitai.
Field Diary, which finally was broad-
cast two years ago, is the only one the
Israeli public has seen so far.
After his first three documentaries
were censored, Gitai lived for seven
years in self-imposed exile in Paris.
Not once did he consider making a
movie on the Yom Kippur War. "I had
nightmares," admits Gitai. "I wasn't ready
to make a film about my experience."
The change came in 1993, when the
homesick director moved back to
Israel to find Yitzhak Rabin negotiat-
ing peace. The time seemed right for
Gitai's kind of war movie.
"I had seen a lot of films that anes-
thetized war, but I' didn't want pretty
-explosions," he says. "I wanted to con-
vey the exhaustion."
Gitai's filmography now runs to 27
feature films and documentaries, and
his most recent trilogy has met with
the usual controversy. Each film in the
trilogy seeks to portray the character
of one of Israel's three main cities: Tel
Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem segment, which pre-
miered in 1999, is titled Kadosh
(Holy), and is set within the city's
ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim quarter.
It depicts the rebellion of an Orthodox
wife against a stifling, hermetic society.
Kadosh was bitterly criticized by
many Orthodox Jews for showing
what they claimed was a twisted pic-
ture of their lifestyle, but it became
the first Israeli entry in 24 years at the
1999 Cannes Film Festival.
Kippur required a lot of military
hardware, cost $4.5 million and is
Gitai's most expensive picture to date.
It screened in May 2000 at the Cannes
competition and, according to Gitai,
some 3,000 members of the audience
applauded as the credits rolled — and
then remained silent in their seats for
a full five minutes.
In a highly unusual step, the noted
Egyptian director Yussef Shahine
praised the film in his country's press.
"I have talked to Egyptian, Syrian
and Palestinian filmmakers," Gitai
says. "It's not easy for them, but I have
found some with similar attitudes" to
mine, people "who want to move away
from their regimes' simplistic propa-
ganda positions.
"When the time comes for a real
peace agreement, it can't be just a
piece of paper. There must be, at the
same time, a cultural dialogue." ❑
Kippur will be shown 7:30 p.m.
Monday, Oct. 29, at the Detroit
Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute
of Arts. $6. (313) 833-3237.
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