Kippur was a big disappointment for me, to see such an experienced director like Gitai come up with such a poor film like this. The opening scene -the boy running in the deserted streets during war time- was really very beautiful. The shot was very successful, with great direction talent. Then, after this scene, little waves of disappointment started to flow through me. Firstly in the scene where the boy and his girlfriend were making love in the paint, the music was so inappropriate and annoying and the scene took too long. Having seen the same guy in these first two scenes, I thought ''ok, he is the leading guy''. And in all movies, you feel the need to sympathize with a character in order to be able to get yourself in the movie. This is how you can feel for the people in the film, and how you can get into the director's head. Anyway. What I felt all through Kippur was not a sense of sympathy for any of the actors, but rather that the film was like a parade of people wandering around. No one was the leading character. One character comes up and says something important and you never see him again. One character begins telling a story in one scene, yet he does not continue with it in the rest of the movie and you try so hard to figure out where that should belong in the film as a whole. Dialogues were very poor. The sentimental side of the war was trying to be conveyed to the audience obviously, but the words used were so poor at describing soldiers' feelings. Most scenes were so unnecessarily long, long silences didn't carry any meaning, and editing was very bad %90 of the time. As for the ending, it was so plain and so poor. Not only could I not sympathize with a character, I also could not get that feeling of relief when the guy returned to her girlfriend and they started making love again. At the start they made love, in the middle he made war, and at the end, love again. This was not such a unique idea and especially when it's tried to be given in such unsuccessful and wrong ways, a great disappointment is caused for the audience. I had hoped to ''feel'', but I couldn't unfortunately. The film lacked that emotion and philosophy.
Having seen an excellent movie like Thin Red Line, I cannot help but compare and contrast Kippur with that. The weakness of Kippur is highlighted then. I absolutely felt something during Thin Red Line -the war, the pain, the anguish, the lightness of death and all- especially in the final scene where the leading actor James Caviezel -there was a leading actor there- was floating free in the water and talking freely in his mind, I felt something in my throat, keeping me on the edge of crying. I felt him, I felt what the director meant, I felt the war, I felt the movie. Thin Red Line is an incomparably successful war film. I have seen Saving Private Ryan too, a beautiful film more showing the war zone and with great special effects, but Thin Red Line is the one in my all time favorites.
Not everything that starts well goes well...
Having seen an excellent movie like Thin Red Line, I cannot help but compare and contrast Kippur with that. The weakness of Kippur is highlighted then. I absolutely felt something during Thin Red Line -the war, the pain, the anguish, the lightness of death and all- especially in the final scene where the leading actor James Caviezel -there was a leading actor there- was floating free in the water and talking freely in his mind, I felt something in my throat, keeping me on the edge of crying. I felt him, I felt what the director meant, I felt the war, I felt the movie. Thin Red Line is an incomparably successful war film. I have seen Saving Private Ryan too, a beautiful film more showing the war zone and with great special effects, but Thin Red Line is the one in my all time favorites.
Not everything that starts well goes well...