Although the tears came again and again while I had watched the trailer weeks before (which had happened to come on another disk) I sat somewhat distracted during the early part of the film. By the time I rented this, I found myself stoic until the very end.
However, there is a scene at the end where the Israeli doctors are working with a soldier, quietly talking to him to find out what kind of help he needs. As was the case throughout the film with the soldiers high and low, the medical professional was calm and collected, just trying to do his job and save a fellow human being.
Up until just before the last few scenes, it was clear that no one knew who would win the war. And in that western style hospital room, a Jewish doctor was ministering to another human being in resolute fashion, with utmost care and sensitivity, disregarding the possibility that the enemy could have been ready to burst through the doors.
The doctor once again drove home my original sense of Israel existing at the edge of an abyss.
I was eight years old when this war was fought. To me, it was grainy black and white footage of tanks quietly guarding retaken mountain passes in the heights and American TV talking heads discussing various opinions about whether or not Israel would stay.
Today, these are my brothers in arms. Today, I feel I should be ready to fight with them, for they are holding back an untold wave of darkness, much darker than the bluish-brown of the too-well mixed paint on a canvas that could represent western civilization's history.