The Gatekeepers REVIEWS


Reviewed by Allan Hunter


The blood-soaked history of the Israeli-Palestine conflict is revisited from the unique perspective of former leaders of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, in The Gatekeepers. Director Dror Moreh’s fascinating documentary is reminiscent of The Fog Of War in the confessional intimacy of its testimony and the valuable insights that arrive only with the benefit of hindsight. The combination of candid interviews and unfa-


miliar archive footage creates an intelligent and compelling film that sheds fresh light on an intrac- table situation. Further festival exposure and spe- cialist theatrical distribution should be guaranteed alongside keen interest from documentary chan- nels and ancillary markets. Moreh takes the Six Day War of 1967 as the start-


ing point for an extensive overview of the subse- quent Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the question of why a significant military victory has never been transformed into a lasting political settlement. His focus is wide-ranging, from the blossoming of hope at the time of the Oslo Accords to the assassi- nation of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, described by one Shin Bet leader as an act “that shattered all hope”. Moreh makes complex issues accessible to the viewer and the use of computer animations based on photographs sometimes lends the film the air of a detective story. Moreh’s real coup is in persuading six former


Shin Bet leaders to speak on camera for the first time, revealing the practicalities of what they were


Disconnect Reviewed by Lee Marshall


A conventional, multilinear ‘big emotional journey’ is lifted by a finely honed script and some solid per- formances in the first dramatic feature by Henry Alex Rubin, director of the well-received 2005 doc- umentary Murderball. Riffing on the theme of loneliness and the diffi-


culties of interpersonal communication in an increasingly connected world, Rubin’s film traces a trio of stories from contemporary America’s wired society, from online sex chatrooms to Facebook pranks, in order to bring out what is in the end a fairly clichéd point about the real human connections that get lost in cyberspace, and the way being permanently online can turn people offline emotionally. One of the film’s small pleasures is watching a


cast that mixes established names — Jason Bate- man, Hope Davis, Andrea Riseborough, Michael Nyqvist — with less well-known players, who do the ensemble thing with old-school professional- ism. Still, multi-strand drama is a tricky niche and Disconnect could end up seeing as much small- screen as theatrical action. Ben (Bobo), a sensitive junior high-school kid, is


picked on by two schoolmates who masquerade on Facebook as a girl who is interested in him; his lawyer dad (Bateman) is too distracted to give his son much time, while mum (Davis) is trying to give him room to be a moody adolescent.


n 16 Screen International at Toronto September 8, 2012 TIFF DOCS


Isr-Fr-Ger-Bel. 2012. 95mins Director Dror Moreh Production companies Dror Moreh Productions, Les Films Du Poisson, Cinephil International sales Cinephil, www.cinephil.co.il Producers Dror Moreh, Estelle Fialon, Philippa Kowarsky Cinematography Avner Shahaf Editor Oron Adar Production designer Doron Koren Main cast Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Carmi Gillon, Ami Ayalon, Avi Dichter, Yuval Diskin


prepared to do to protect their country and their thoughts on the moral and ethical dilemmas that confronted them. There is a chilling quality to the matter-of-fact discussion of targeted assassina- tions, torture and betrayal as if they were all simply part of another day at the office. There are justifications and evasions, sly smiles


and disingenuous comments. You begin to suspect Moreh will not be able to break their professional calm and belief that they did what was necessary regardless of its legality or morality. Any suspicion the film is one-sided is under-


mined when the Shin Bet leaders discuss the big- ger questions. Here, they acknowledge the


mistakes of their political leaders. Avraham Sha- lom, head of the service in the 1980s, comes clean about the notorious murder of terrorists captured alive after the hijacking of the 300 bus from Tel Aviv to Ashkelon in 1984, while Ami Ayalon, who took charge after Rabin’s assassination, is scathing about the failure of the Camp David talks. The heart of the film lies in the tension between


the actions these men were prepared to sanction and the insight it has bequeathed them. For all the talk of collateral damage, retaliation and revenge, they all seem to reach similar positions that the only way forward is through dialogue and the only hope lies in a two-state solution.


SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS


US. 2012. 115mins Director Henry Alex Rubin Production companies LD Entertainment, Wonderful Films International sales Exclusive Media, www.exclusivemedia.com Producers Mickey Liddell, William Horberg, Jennifer Monroe Screenplay Andrew Stern Cinematography Ken Seng Editor Lee Percy, Kevin Tent Production designer Dina Goldman Music Max Richter Main cast Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Frank Grillo, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Andrea Riseborough, Alexander Skarsgard, Max Thieriot, Jonah Bobo, Colin Ford, Haley Ramm


In the second story, Riseborough turns in a con-


vincing performance as Nina Dunham, an ambi- tious reporter with a local TV news station. Posing as a client, Nina contacts teen stud Kyle (Thieriot), who does his stuff on an adults-only sex site. She persuades Kyle to tell his story, which brings her professional kudos but leads to complications. The final plot strand, and perhaps the least com-


pelling, centres on a young couple (Patton and Skarsgard) going though a rough patch following the death of their baby. When they discover they have been victims of online identity theft, they


engage computer investigation expert Mike Dixon (Grillo) — who is a former cop and father of Jason (Ford), one of the kids involved in the cyber-bully- ing of Ben — to trace the perpetrator. There are several points at which any of these


stories could turn to melodrama, but one of the strengths of Stern’s script is the way the story brushes against this danger while avoiding it through telling character observations and sensi- tive third-act wraps to each of the stories. The finale of the Riseborough-Thieriot plot is particu- larly well handled in this respect.


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