It all began in 1987, when Itzhak Rabin, then Minister of Defense, asked Lanzmann, after seeing Shoah, to make a film about the War of Independence. Lanzmann refused: "There are in fact two possible accounts of this war, the Israeli account and the Arab account. It's not possible to enter into the reasons of both sides at once, except to make very bad cinema." In return, Lanzmann offers Rabin a film about "the reappropriation of force and violence by the Jews of Israel." The Minister of Defense accepts and replies to Lanzmann: "We don't have a shekel to offer you, but I put the army at your disposal, we won't hide anything from you, it will open its secrets to you."
For Lanzmann, this was the beginning of a great military epic. At the age of 67, the director became a soldier, boarding Phantom and F16 fighter jets carrying up to 7G. He piloted Merkava tanks, and took part in combined maneuvers in the middle of the desert for 48 hours without interruption...
Lanzmann portrays an army unlike any other, and understands the singular courage of fatality, not just the survival of the men, but that of an entire nation fueled by "the fear of annihilation".
In his memoirs, Lanzmann sums up this thought by quoting Salmen Lewental, a Tsahal commando: "The truth," he wrote, "is that you want to live at any price, you want to live because you live, because the whole world lives. There is only life..." With Tsahal, we understand that young Israeli soldiers have "neither violence in their blood nor the privilege accorded to life, which makes safeguarding it a founding principle and explains the specific military tactics peculiar to this army and to no other."
