31/08/2024 - VENICE 2024: In his philosophical film essay, Israeli director Amos Gitai tries to explore the root of mankind’s lust for war and destruction

Night has fallen. The camera slowly pans along a busy street in Tel Aviv, capturing the hustle and bustle of people on the pavement. “Bring them home,” demands a message on a little stone wall. Then, as we move further into a square, a ghostly, ceremonial table is set out in expectation of someone who has clearly been impeded. These are shrines to the hostages of 7 October. But as the camera wanders, its lens suddenly alights upon an open-air yoga class. Life and death – day-to-day routine and threat – go hand in hand.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be one of the most prominent examples in contemporary history, but “humans at war” has been a constant throughout the millennia. It’s one that Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai has dissected with a focus on his region in films such as Kippur, Kadosh, House and Rabin, the Last Day [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. This time, his gaze zooms out. Why war? Why do people feel the need to kill each other? This is what he asks in his film essay Why War [+see also:
interview: Amos Gitai
film profile], which has premiered out of competition at the 81st Venice Film Festival.

Why War is also the title of a published collection of letters by Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. Exchanging correspondence from 1931-1932, before the tragedy of World War II but during the rise of fascism in Europe, they ponder the question bearing in mind moral and ethical considerations, making bold hypotheses and using anthropological precision. It is a publication around which Gitai frames his deliberations, enriching the complexity of it with excerpts of the female voices of Virginia Woolf and Susan Sontag.

“Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?” is the hopeful starting point of the discussion. These are the words of Einstein. “We have to stand against war because every man has a right over his own life,” is Freud’s answer. To enhance the written word, Gitai has cast actors Micha Lescot and Mathieu Amalric as Einstein and Freud, respectively. His regular Irène Jacob appears as a woman traversing time and space by sitting in a hotel room, watching the news on TV, or reciting Woolf and Sontag on stage. Jérôme Kircher is an unnamed soldier, caught between being a victim of warmongering and an aggressor longing for action.

The stage is a recurring visual element, a spotlight in which the make-believe is carefully dissected. Lescot recites his monologue as a make-up artist glues on his moustache. Freud ponders, while anachronistically holding a copy of Why War. Jacob enhances the symbolism of her red dress by smearing red hair dye over her fingers and forehead. The Viennese Chamber Choir sings as media images of war flicker in the background.

“How does it feel to watch war on TV?” Jacob asks. The news makes it look like a spectacle. Gitai abstains, however, from simply including a brutal reproduction of the news cycle on screen. Instead, he stages an over-stylised reenactment of the Siege of Jerusalem. A soldier wanders through the woods. The artificial nature of it is, of course, obvious, but what is not an illusion is the gloomy reality of war.

Why War was produced by France’s Agav Films, Israel’s Agav Hafakot, Swiss outfit Elefant Films and Italy’s Indiana Production Spa.