User reviews

Amos Gitai has made some fine films ("Kippur" and "Kadosh" in particular) but this is a major disappointment.

We get archive footage of Rabin's assassination, and various re- enactments, but the majority of the excessive running time focuses on the three-man committee appointed to investigate the security lapses which facilitated the killing. Each of the many witnesses is warned of the consequences of being untruthful, and there were so many witnesses I was ready to scream if I heard that warning again.These interminable scenes sent me to sleep for some time, and although I attended a screening where everyone was Jewish, a good many left before the end. I'd have done the same if I hadn't been in the middle of a row and reluctant to disturb others. I really should have been more selfish!

Gitai shows the toxic forces screaming their hatred of Rabin for seeking peace by reaching an accord with Arafat and the PLO. The mob at a Likud rally calling for Rabin to be killed, with Netanyahu on the balcony doing nothing to discourage them. The placards showing Rabin, who'd fought for Israel in the Haganah and then IDF, in Nazi uniform. The Orthodox rabbis invoking din rodef to say killing him was okay because he'd betrayed and endangered the Jewish people (one even said "Kill all Arabs.") The settlers, eager to seize yet more land from the Palestinians. To be fair, Hamas had rejected the Accord and stepped up its attacks: unless this was mentioned while I slept, its omission was a mistake.

There was a little light relief, from the witness who wouldn't sit down, and particularly the Orthodox woman psychiatrist, who'd never met Rabin but because she disagreed with his politics diagnosed him as schizophrenic. Overall though, I'd have been better off just reading a detailed account of this tragedy.

In the new Docu- drama, states the Israeli director and filmmaker Amos Gitai, an important element in modern cinema. In a dry documentary language, he sets before us a life- drama, that grows intensifying ahead the sounds of the final Gong which had been played already, at the beginning of the movie. Gitai leads the audience to the hatch, through which one can see in addition to the movie plot, the present reality and is led to draw the prompt conclusions, which Gitai as usual, leaves the intelligent and sensitive viewer, to find by himself. Due to the current relevance of the subject matter, the film also becomes both, schooling and practical tool for a society that seeks changes. And that where it's innovation lies: while Gitai was talking only about the past, he requires the viewer not only to look at the future, but implicitly forces him in to participate. The "Gun" of Israeli Prime Minister's assassin, is the symbol of the film and it's key word. The exposure of the facts, which are the "smoking gun" in an alliteration, meaning proving the existence of crimes of incitement, sedition and training of the killer, who was himself the "Gun" of those who sentence Rabin to death and sent this murderer as his executioner. The film did not come to "point" at the guilty ones, or to develop any conspiracy. But as the film's narrative unfolds before us, we find that the incident of Rabin death, was accompanied in a chronology foretold during a long time earlier, by a growing list of those who are carrying the responsibility. A list that actually includes characters not only from the settlement movement, but also from the right and left wings (including Rabin himself for his carelessness personal security). And in particular, the team (which included the Deputy Prime Minister , other Ministers, police and security Chiefs and Organizations) who was due to respond in real time to events Assertively, but responded as they did. Even the Commission of Inquiry through which Gitai observes on the events, do not escape his implicit but piercing critic. Like in a sketch masterfully fluttering, Gitai points the white dots which hold nothing but documentary, piercing interviews or constructing events by exact replica, to originate the contour and the border outline of the painful parts of the picture, which are left vague and empty and without any touch at all....Just like the space left by Rabin as he walked away. Gitai leaves us with the possibility of learning their mysteries and discover them ourselves, by filling their gaps. Not only on the subject of "who is responsible" for Rabin's assassination, but on the fact that if we do not solve the fundamental problem, which is: "What do we do with The Settlers Movement and How do we absorb and be able to stop their criminal way?", we solve nothing. This film comes with a duty: to influence events in Israel in the coming years. And as which, must be learned by all those who want to change something ever, in Israel. Our country is now at a crossroads unparalleled in difficulty, as there ever was. And because more than ever, changing the government in Israel is needed, we must understand (in the most democratic and enlightened way) that "He who Upstart by a Sin, By that Sin will be Judged Down and Fall from his Nest, to the Proper Place, Where He will Bear the Just Punishment". Gitai's film is about this task. This is a film that does not come only for providing intellectual needs, but asks for a real change in the action too. Rabin's assassination marks the beginning of the struggle between Israel peace-loving sane (left and right) side, which operates according to the Geneva Conventions, against the Settlers Movement that is trying constantly to look it over, by messianic religious or nationalist racism. This struggle began then. When those shots were fired toward Rabin. From that moment Israel entered sanity shock coma, which lasts for 20 years. And there are many among us who are still mourning the "death of the left" together with Rabin's death. Amos Gitai as a filmmaker, is trying to appeal to this concept and stimulate the social Sanity revival. With his movie, he flutters Sanity's closed eyelids with an artist feather, stimulating them to get wide open for her eyes to see. And here we find the greatness of this film, as it directs the viewer towards one target only: The required Disillusionment and the Sobriety derived from It.