Mark Reviews Movies: IMAGE OF VICTORY

Image of Victory, Bleiberg Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 14, 2022

In theory, the structure of writer/director Avi Nesher's Image of Victory is about building toward a climactic battle. The fight, based on a real one that occurred during the early days of Israel's declared independence, is the climax of this story, although it happens almost as an afterthought. Within history and this dramatization, it wasn't supposed to occur. The overarching conflict, between Israeli settlers and the military of Egypt, should have been finished, but Egypt needed at least the appearance of some success, while the Israeli settlement at Naitzanim just happened to be along the way of the Egyptian army's exit from the area.

That the final battle here happens suddenly, without much warning or prompting in the script, may seem odd, considering how much of the plot revolves around the escalating tensions between the opposing sides. It is, though, more in line with Nesher's goal, which is less about building up to conflict and more about portraying the lives of people who will, by circumstance and chance and the decisions of the uncaring powerful, find themselves caught up in that conflict.

The battle at the end of this film is inevitable, but it is only necessary because some people in power determined that some kind of pride needed to be upheld or some sort of sacrifice needed to be made. For everyone else, it is an event that will haunt the rest of their lives, a defeat that will make others look at them with shame, or a death sentence. Winning or losing a war is the privilege of those in power. For the central characters of this story, there is only a life lived with the consequences or a sudden, violent death.

Nesher's ambitions here are substantial, and for the most part, he succeeds at least on a thematic level. Some of that comes from how relatively ordinary the events and through lines of this story are, save for some occasional firefights and nighttime escapes and that ultimate battle, which sets a few dozen Israeli settlers against an Egyptian battalion, multiple tanks, and bombers.

We live with the residents of the Nitzanim Kibbutz, circa 1948, as they go about their business, maintain or develop friendships, begin romances, and find some time for rest and relaxation. All the while, they have to prepare for the obvious threat of the Egyptian military, which has come to Palestine to aid the Arab people living there.

The most significant of Nesher's goals in this film, though, is that the Egyptians are not anonymous, faceless foes. They have lives, too, as well as jobs that have little to do with combat, an idea and philosophy in which they believe, and even a romance that plays out in the backdrop. The kibbutz residents have the more intricate characterization and more significant screen time, perhaps, but the story begins and ends, not with one of them, but with an Egyptian journalist named Hassanein (Amir Khoury), assigned to document the war on film. In an act that literally gives both sides of the conflict a voice, he is also the story's narrator.

Almost 30 years after the story's major battle, an older Hassanein is cynical and dismayed about the peace treaty between his country and Israel. The rest of the story consists of his recollections of the war and, especially, an Israeli woman named Mira (a tough and effortlessly magnetic Joy Reiger), whose smile in the face of defeat has left him astounded for three decades.

The narrative moves back in time to the late 1940s—and then back and forth between the settlement, within view of a Palestinian town, and Hassanein's attempts to accurately but positively capture a platoon of volunteer Egyptian fighters, who are soon to be backed by the government, in their mission. He is the primary perspective of that side of the conflict, although the regiment's commander Khalif (Ala Dakka), a man strong in his political determination, and a young solider named Salman (Abdallah El Akal), who falls for a local woman, offer viewpoints that are distinct from Hassanein but somewhat connect to certain residents of the kibbutz.

In the settlement, we follow Mira and a handful of other residents, such as her love-seeking friend Yareakh (Tom Avni), her ex-partner and son's father Elyakim (Elisha Banai), and Avraham (Yadin Gellman), the commander of a platoon of prisoners sent to defend the small colony. Between the rising tensions and skirmishes with the Egyptian force, some others—headstrong Naomi (Netta Roth) and two Argentine cousins (played by Eliana Tidhar and Meshi Kleinstein), one of whom eventually starts dating Yareakh—figure into the drama, interpersonal fights, and comedy within the kibbutz.

Nesher's blend of the melodrama within the colony, some humorous episodes of chores, a few lighthearted moments of flirtation, and the severity of surprise ambushes doesn't always work. Some tonal shifts are too jarring and, even with a shift in perspective, come across as somewhat distasteful (a gag, toying with the sudden halting of triumphant music, performed after a terrified Israeli soldier is pinned down in a destroyed truck being a notable example). Even so, there's a fine sense of the routines and concerns of these characters, on both sides, that frames this tale of war in an everyday, on-the-ground context.

The shock, perhaps, is that Nesher doesn't take political sides in Image of Victory. There's only the unified side of regular people, caught up in a fight that's only theirs because of politics, government decisions, and military strategy beyond their control. Whatever the film's flaws, that approach and perspective are more than worthy.

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