Rabin, The Last Day
Studio: Kino Lorber
Directed by Amos Gitai
Jan 29, 2016
Web Exclusive
Portraying important political events through film can occasionally turn out stuffy, indulgent fare, while the conversely self-important biopic approaches to major historical events can be too detached from their source through sentimentality bordering on kitsch. Rabin, The Last Day avoids both pitfalls by swinging from two different ropes, marrying real life footage and interviews with thoughtful, competent filmmaking that treats the subject matter with nuanced realism.
Yitzhak Rabin was the prime minister of Israel who signed the Oslo accords, a move that earned him the Nobel peace prize, yet didn’t sit too well with the right wing extremists. In 1995 he was assassinated at a mass rally by Yigal Amir. Rabin, The Last Day depicts both the assassination and the immediate aftermath, while exploring the political climate in Israel that bred violence and sedition, resulting in Rabin’s death. Gatai is a careful and deliberate filmmaker, but lays the blame for this extremism squarely at Benjamin Netanyahu’s feet.
The film is, for all intents and purposes, a docudrama, but utilizes news footage and interviews to add another layer of realism to the story. Gitai elevates substance with style, employing a steady pace of tension and drawn out beats. For instance, the film opens with a minimal one-on-one interview that lasts nearly seven minutes before cutting to a sequence of shots leading up to Rabin’s assassination that lasts another seven minutes. This sequence serves as a long transition from real life footage to staged filmmaking, opening first on a wide exterior shot of the rally Rabin attended the night of his death. Each shot moves closer to the subject, but are equally long, and since the sequence is a collage of found footage there is no consistency between the shots but rather a bubbling sense of unease. A few minutes later, another scene takes place where police question one of the men who filmed the aforementioned footage, but this interview is filmed with actors, punctuating the reality of what we’re seeing with a reminder that this is no work of fiction.
Rabin, The Last Day is a compelling experiment in political filmmaking, complete with a dour pessimistic tone. It is a slow burn, but the approach lends a solid portrayal of uncertainty to a situation that is continuously volatile and complex. Without staking out any real answers, Gatai portrays external conflict through the unseen, intimate moments that surrounded the assassination. In examining both the anger that led to Rabin’s murder and the confusion in the aftermath, the only thing that is clear is that there are no satisfying resolutions.
Author rating: 7.5/10
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