Watching the Israeli film “Foxtrot” is like watching a dream play out.
Writer-director Samuel Maoz’s (“Lebanon”) excellent film is of course more structured than the average dream (or nightmare), with themes and Greek tragedy twists that are expertly crafted to test the heart, but there is a precise sensation of out-of-body powerlessness and comic absurdity throughout that can only be described as dreamlike. And the overall experience is a meditative and powerful one.
The story is ostensibly about a man, Michael Feldmann (Lior Ashkenazi) and a woman, Daphna Feldmann (Sarah Adler) immediately after they are told that their son, Jonathan, a soldier, has died in the line of duty. Daphna faints at the sight of the military messengers at her door and is taken to her room and sedated. Michael peers down the hallway, stunned and unable to do anything — cry, help, speak. The officers tell him to drink water every hour, get him a glass and set a recurring alarm on his phone to remind him. They tell him what will happen in the next few days. It is efficient, emotionless and routine, and all while this is happening around him, the camera barely moves from a close-up of Michael’s haunted face.
Family members come by unannounced and uninvited and weep in Michael’s arms. But then his aging mother seems unfazed by the news. Occasional dance breaks (really) begin to make as much sense as anything else as we drift along with Michael in this initial state of shock.
This whole first section, while beautifully shot, designed and acted, feels a little like wheels spinning in its repetitiveness. What is the point, you wonder. Then the film slaps you awake before it lulls you back to the trance state as it takes you to the remote military outpost where Jonathan (Yonathan Shiray) was stationed and looks back on the past six months of his life there.