Grief is strange, painful, and a little hard to look at.
This is made abundantly clear in new film Foxtrot, following the mourning process of an Israeli couple in the wake of their son Jonathan’s death. The film artfully turns and dances in between the couple at home, both in present and future, and their son at his post in the Israeli Defense Forces with fellow soldiers. We are given glimpses into Jonathan from time to time, but his father Michael as well as his dark secrets.
There are slightly gruesome bits to this film, things which will make you shift in your seat. Skin scraped off knuckles to expose the blood underneath, the back of a hand scalded with water from the bathroom sink, sights that the camera does not shy away from and instead will focus on for just a second too long, a moment past comfort. Foxtrot does not intend for you to be comfortable. Indeed, as you continue to watch Michael and Dafna react in their own ways to the loss, you will learn that Michael’s past continues to shadow his present day and inform his actions. That, of course, does not escape his wife’s notice. Though he brushes her concern off and cites the sedatives the military has given her to cope with the loss as a reason for the dispute, the audience can see past his closed-off eyes. The camera follows his face, doesn’t let him hide.
As the movie progresses, we are held prisoner to watch how the sins of the father have followed through the bloodline into the actions of the son. Michael haunts Jonathan during his service even as Jonathan will haunt Michael after death, even as Michael’s victims and casualties of war haunt him, ghosts lurking in the bags under his eyes. An artful animation disturbs and fascinates alike, flying off the page of a drawing Jonathan’s parents woefully misinterpret postmortem. Do not go to Foxtrot expecting to find an answer, or a way to move on. Watching this will remind you- your parents know you, and do not. You can carry the weight of your family, yet still become something entirely new and monstrous.
Foxtrot Opens in the US on March 2, 2018.
