Directed by Samuel Maoz. Starring Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Oshri Cohen, Michael Moshonov, Zohar Strauss, Dudu Tasa 15A cert, lim release, 93 min

This claustrophobic Israeli war film becomes an almost existential experience, writes DONALD CLARKE

THE CHARACTERS in Samuel Maoz’s extraordinary war film, winner of the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, do, technically speaking, move about quite a bit. Crew members of an Israeli tank during the 1982 Lebanon conflict, they trundle through a sunflower field, advance on a devastated city and find themselves incapacitated after the vehicle is hit by enemy fire.

For all that motoring, Lebanoncould reasonably claim to be the most static (not to say the most claustrophobic) film ever made. Allowing just three rogue exterior shots, the director keeps his camera crammed up next to the characters within the tank throughout.

Utilising a convincing emulsion of digital and traditional film-making techniques, Lebanonends up as a compelling, ear- splitting, properly appalling audiovisual barrage. In comparison, the characters in Das Bootseem to have all the stretching room and fresh oxygen any man could reasonably desire.

Maoz, who served in a tank during the conflict, doesn’t work too hard at distinguishing between the soldiers, One is disciplined, another jabbers manically, a third is nervy, a fourth is the inevitable rooky. When they encounter a Syrian prisoner of war and a Christian Phalangist, neither is seen as anything more complex than an archetypal representative of their clan.

So Lebanonmay be a little short on analysis and political nuance. But as an attempt to communicate the visceral dread of war, it proves an unalloyed triumph. Making powerful use of teeth-juddering clunks and brain-mashing throbs, the sound design suggests an environment entirely composed of metal and ordnance. Though the characters are only metres from their targets, the hermetically sealed nature of the vehicle allows them to think themselves in another dimension.

Indeed, by waiting until the new century to make his film, Maoz has allowed an unintended parallel to creep in. Many viewers, watching crosshairs pass across annihilated landscapes, will involuntarily find themselves thinking of today's videogames, such as Call of Duty.

It may sound like a trivial point, but remember that the coming generation of soldiers has grown up with such console games. Another layer of emotional distance is, perhaps, being inserted between the invader and the invaded. Worry, if you think it worthwhile.