This Israeli animated film has been largely hanging around in limbo since it was finished in 2021 after taking eight years to complete – though this may or may not be due to the international opprobrium that Israel has attracted in the intervening period. It’s actually a rather fascinating film, if oddly told and a bit severe. Legend of Destruction isn’t about the current conflict, taking place as it does in the first century, 66 years after the birth of Christ – although of course, if you squint a bit, parallels with current events are there to be discerned. Revolutions fracture from within, hegemons topple due to their own greedy self-destruction, and in the end ordinary people are the ones who suffer and die as cities burn. Fill in the blanks as you see fit.
Cleaving pretty closely to the known facts as recorded by Flavius Josephus’ The Jewish War and the Talmud, the script by director Gidi Dar and Shuli Rand recounts how Jewish resistance rose up in Judea, particularly in Jerusalem, against the occupying Romans and the reigning Jewish elite, including the Temple’s high priests and queen Berenice of Cilicia (Evangeline Lilly), over excessive taxation. Our protagonist narrator is ordinary schlemiel Ben Batich (voiced in this English language version by Oscar Isaac), who becomes a leader of one faction after he snaps and can no longer agree with the pleas for patience and tolerance from his mother (Marilu Henner) and rabbi uncle Yohanan ben Zakkai (Elliott Gould).
Riots in the streets bring early victories, but Batich and his followers eventually fall out with rival anti-Roman revolutionaries led by Simon Bar Giora (Billy Zane) and others, in such a way that might make some viewers involuntarily think of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Either way, it all ends with the Second Temple of Jerusalem in flames, Ben Batich and his family starving, and Rome ready to repress further once they get their own house in order (back home in Italy the emperor Nero has been killed and the peasants are revolting). What’s thrillingly persuasive about this rendition of history is that no one mentions Christianity here – it just wasn’t that much of a thing at this point in time, outside a few scattered followers of Christ kicking around and trying to get a new religion off the ground.
The whole story is told through still digital pictures by David Polonsky and Michael Faust that look sometimes like oil paintings and sometimes like pastel, full of energy and movement. Inspired apparently by Chris Marker’s immortal photograph-based short La Jetée, there’s almost no movement, until the end when the film-makers break out a tiny bit of stutter animation to drive home the final point.
The end result is like having a very fancy graphic novel read to you by a cast of big-name actors. It’s innovative, for sure, but arguably not a direction many others are likely to take as it seems so static – but you have to admire Dar’s audacity for trying it.
• Legend of Destruction is on digital platforms from 15 September
