Incitement

Israeli filmmaker Yaron Zilberman takes on a vital 2020 topic in his film Incitement, set largely in 1995. The fact-based drama traces the path of law student Yigal Amir from anger with the original Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993, through Amir’s eventual assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995.

But Zilberman’s chief interest is there in his title: the incitement to violence in the words and political assertions of authority figures, from Benjamin Netanyahu — the right-wing opposition leader who became prime minister after Rabin’s death — down to neighborhood rabbis who shrouded their endorsement of murder in arcane (and controversial) interpretations of the Torah. Amir was, after all, a Jew who murdered a fellow Jew, which most Israelis of all political persuasions believed was too heinous a possibility to come true.

Incitement is cleverly constructed, using a narrow aspect ratio and a handheld (but fairly steady) camera in mostly long takes so that the staged footage perfectly matches historical clips, which allows the filmmakers to put actor Yehuda Nahari (as Amir) right in the middle of actual rallies, demonstrations, and even the aftermath of a terrorist bombing. It also weaves real politicians and pundits such as Rabin and Netanyahu into the seamless dramatized world it creates. More news coverage from the time appears in long excerpts on the televisions Amir is always watching, and on radio broadcasts.

This fascinating film was Israel’s entry in the Best International Feature category for this year’s Academy Awards, but it wasn’t selected as one of the 10 finalists. That partly reflects an especially strong field of contenders, but it’s also because Incitement lets everything go on longer than it needs to: rallies, speeches, driving trips, parties, news clips, clandestine meetings of budding Jewish terrorists, debates about the heroism or villainy of Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli settler who murdered 29 Palestinians in a mosque in Hebron in 1994. Almost every scene continues beyond when its point has been made, and some debates — is Rabin a heretical “Pursuer” who deserves death according to Talmudic law? — are rehashed several times.

Zilberman is making the point that the pressure Amir felt to take action built and built until he could see no other path but assassination, but some streamlining could have broadened the film’s appeal.

As it is, Incitement is certainly a worthy and watchable work, humanizing topics most Americans have probably not thought much about, such as the fragmentation and class conflicts within Israeli society, and Israali citizens’ complicated and contradictory opinions about their fellow refugees from oppression, the Palestinians. It’s also uniformly well-acted, the interactions among its characters always credible and sometimes deeply unsettling. The casualness with which these people debate heinous acts — whether recent acts of mass murder or plans for terrorist acts — should be a warning to Americans in 2020.

Indeed, the topic of “incitement” by political rhetoric has become even more important in the U.S. in recent years. The film ends by making the point that no rabbi within Israel was ever held legally accountable for judging Rabin a legitimate target for elimination. The dangerous voices in America in 2020 remain equally immune.

Grade: B. Not rated, but an R equivalent. Opens February 28 at Grail Moviehouse.

(Photo courtesy of the Toronto International Film Festival; the film is distributed by Greenwich Entertainment in the U.S.)