B

Like “Waltz with Bashir,” Samuel Maoz’s film is based on the writer-director’s memories of his experience as part of the Israeli force that invaded Lebanon in 1982. But while Ari Folman used animation and interviews to give his repressed recollections a hallucinatory quality, Maoz takes a more direct approach, though the result has a surrealistic character of its own. “Lebanon” is reminiscent of those Hollywood war films of the 1950s, like Robert Wise’s “Run Silent, Run Deep,” that were set in the claustrophobic confines of a submarine, where tensions, both strategic and personal, simmered in the hothouse atmosphere. But the locale this time is the interior of a tank assigned to accompany a small group of paratroopers as they break across the border in the initial stages of the campaign.

The occupants are uneasy commander Assi (Itay Tiran), intense driver Yigal (Michael Moshonov), verbose ammunition-loader Hertzel (Oshri Cohen) and a nervous newcomer, shooter Shmulik (Yoav Donat). They’re occasionally joined by paratroop leader Jamil (Zohar Strauss), who calmly gives the green tank crew orders and berates them when they fail to do their jobs and endanger his men.

“Lebanon” mixes character-based interaction among this small group of fighters with episodes that introduce other figures. Some are the unfortunate victims either of the ambivalent Scmulik’s failure to fire upon cars when told to do so, or his eventual obedience to the order. There’s also a Syrian soldier (Dudu Tasa) who’s captured by the paratroopers and deposited in the tank as a prisoner. And most frighteningly, there are two Phalange militiamen, one (Ashraf Barhom) almost crazed—Christians allied with the Israelis but with agendas of their own—who are assigned to help the crew after their tank has been damaged by rocket fire and trapped in a dangerous, heavily-shelled town.

Heroism is not the hallmark of the film. If anything predominates, it’s crushing confusion, a sense of purposelessness, and the heartbreaking loss of life on both sides. Maoz builds tension cannily, keeping his camera focused on the interior of the tank but providing a somewhat broader context via periscope-like exterior shots through a sickly green lens. If the film has a flaw, it’s in a failure to flesh out the crew members sufficiently. Cohen’s Hertzel is the major exception; the character’s ill-temper and obstreperousness, as well as his dark hair, set him apart. But Donat has a few moments of pathos, and everyone else, including the actors doing the disembodied radio voices from command central, is solid.

Cameraman Giora Bejach has obviously worked closely with Maoz to give a closed, confined atmosphere to the proceedings, and they succeed only too well. You’ll probably come out of “Lebanon” with limbs slightly aching, as though you’d been stuck in their machine for a while yourself. But the greater pain is the sense of loss of pointlessness that the picture conveys. This is war as hell on a small but incisive scale.