Nadav Lapid on Policeman

Israeli director Nadav Lapid writes about his controversial feature film Policeman, which screened at the BFI London Film Festival.

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I conceived the basic idea for Policeman in 2005, and started to write it in 2006. Back then the idea of "Israeli social radicals" seemed totally imaginary, an intellectual, theoretical protest. For me, it was exactly the way to indicate the lack of such an opposition despite the social injustice. During the financing stage of the film, I had several similar reactions regarding the radical's part of the film: "Is it a science fiction film, this social struggle from within?"

Policeman deals with the Israeli state of mind as I see it. According to this state of mind – the result of an endless situation of national conflict (but also the reason for this national conflict), of years of general military service and of a school system that sees itself, in a way, as a means to prepare kids to become good soldiers. It is also as a result of the basic Israeli existence, a state of persecution from an outside, eternal menace, which is defined and united by this menace: the Palestinian is the obvious enemy, a potential terrorist from the day he was born. In a society too exhausted to think, where a big percentage of the population deals with daily economic survival, Palestinian and terrorist became almost synonymous.

By using Jewish terrorists, I tried to expose the biggest Israeli taboo; the struggle of Jews against Jews, by challenging it. I have tried to discuss a very real Israeli problem, the fracture from within and the way it is manipulated. I also wanted to show how, in a state so used to violence on a daily basis, there is a dichotomy in the distinction between us and them, good ones and targets, is so clear. Where the level of the debate and the intellectual capacity to think differently has been reduced to marginality, it is easy to become the enemy, the target, the other, the Palestinian.

The issue of having two parts-two groups was one of my main concerns when preparing the movie. I discussed it a lot, first with the DOP: should we have different style for each part? Different aesthetics? Different politics of framing? Of shooting? And then, during the editing process, with the editor. Should we have a different tone? A different politics of cuts?

Also, the way the actors are performing, their presence in front of the camera: should it look alike or be separated? In the end we understood that it would be too easy, not intelligent, and mainly wrong, with regard to the film's intentions, to create two film styles. That's why the editing is quite similar. In both cases we tried to create an editing that would not be spoiled, that would not let the sometimes stylized scenes enjoy their own existence too much. It was a tough edit, not a lot of cuts, to the contrary, but cuts that would be well felt, not hidden ones, cuts that would create a tension, kind of dialectic tension, without wanting to sound too theoretical, between the two sides of the cut.

The same thing regarding the camera work: I feel that in both parts the camera acts more or less in the same way. It stands there and calls the characters to stand in front of it and to declare, one after the other, the fact they exist, then trying to repeatedly define what this existence is about, from which materials they are composed. In a way, this is the main activity of characters in both parts in the movie. They use rituals and ceremonies in order to declare who they are in front of the camera, again and again. Like the five policemen, in the opening scene, shouting their names to the valley.

For me, despite their huge differences, there are a lot of things in common between both groups. Both are obsessed, as I said already, with rituals and ceremonies – in a way, dealing with ceremonial representations of the thing instead of the thing itself. The ceremony of brotherhood on the side of the policemen, and the ceremony of terror and revolution on the side of the young radicals. Both are complete prisoners in their own universe, of their own moral system, of their own values. A kind of deadly naivety, a totally autistic devotion to their causes, which are both impressive and frightening, combined a total lack of capacity to make one step towards the other. An existential autism that enables them to maybe act, but assure the deterministic failure of the tentative to bring about a change.  

The reactions to the film in Israel have been polemic. It is highly praised by the critics, while the public is clearly divided between those who are shaken by the film and really admire it, and those who are full of anger. I've been told that at the end of screenings people were fiercely debating and shouting at each other. The Israeli censorship committee at first limited the authorised age to watch the movie to over 18 years old, the most severe age restriction. This evoked a big scandal in the media, arguing that this decision was a purely political censorship. In the end, and after the intervention of the Minister of Culture, the committee reduced the limitation to under 14 years old.

The first public screening of the film took place at the beginning of July at the Jerusalem Film Festival. Two days later a huge social uprising began in Israel. During these months of protests I have witnessed scenes on the streets of Israel that reminded me, in an unbelievable way, of my film. It’s as if reality has interpreted scenes from my script and the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem have become the shooting set.

On 20 October the film was commercially released in Israel. On 29 October, after a short break in order to reorganize, the leaders of the social protest declared the beginning of the next stage of the social struggle, more determined than before, under the title: revolution.