Venice Review: Amos Gitai's Powerful, Political, Provocative 'Rabin: The Last Day'

At the end of the short interview excerpt that opens "Rabin: The Last Day," the interviewer asks Shimon Peres, the man who succeeded Yitzhak Rabin as Prime Minister of Israel, a bold, hypothetical question: Would Israel be more peaceful and more stable if Rabin had not been assassinated by right-wing radical Yigal Amir back in November 1995? You listen for the conventionally cautious response typical to politicians —perhaps a reframing of the issue, perhaps a protest at the unanswerable nature of a what-if. It doesn't come. Instead, Peres looks straight back at the interviewer and says, levelly and immediately, "Yes." The Israel/Palestine conflict, with its intractable religious, ethnic, historical and cultural divides, is so complex and so deeply rooted that such a bold declarative statement doesn't just sound surprising: it sounds dangerous. And the entirety of Amos Gitai's deeply absorbing, intelligent "Rabin: The Last Day" is similarly bold and...