ATTENTION: avoid reading if you don’t want to come across spoilers on Fauda 4.
The fourth installment of the Israeli series Fauda came out last Friday, January 20, on Netflix and immediately entered the Top Ten of the most watched series of the moment. After all Faudawhich in Arabic means chaosis a product that has received several very important awards in Israel and is recognized among the most interesting spy series of the last ten years according to the authoritative New York Times.
The series should have come to an end with this fourth season but the conditional is always a must for highly successful series. Of course, the last scene of the last episode leaves very little room for manoeuvre and the characters, between protagonists and co-stars, all seem to have concluded their cycle. But as often happens in the world of television serials, the last word belongs to the executives who are silent for the moment and observe the data on views, casting an eye towards thealgorithm waiting to issue the sentence.
So, after two years of waiting, the fourth season is finally on our screens. Twelve new episodes that satisfy the palate of fans. Unlike the previous three seasons, this one leaves the Middle Eastern borders to make a trip to Brussels (actually the exteriors seem to have been filmed in Kiev a few months before the start of the war). A tribute to Old Europe but not only, as he says Lior Razwho is the creator, screenwriter of the series, together with Avi Issacharoff and also starring as Doron Kavillio. This fourth chapter, in fact, leaves the narrow confines of the previous ones and turns its gaze elsewhere, even in Lebanon (where this season has had a resounding success) and in Syria, lands tormented by countless, continuous, wars. A necessitysays the actor, in order to better explain that the concept of identity it goes far beyond simply being Israeli or Palestinian, Jewish or Muslim. The identity of Fauda’s men and women is rich in a thousand facets and needs its time and space to establish itself as a principle on which to build bridges that unite and not walls that separate.
Undoubtedly a series of very profound concepts which, however, risk ending up in the background, swept away from anger, remorse, frustration and violence, all much less noble feelings, which dwell in the protagonists of Fauda 4.
The story begins with a foot chase through the streets of Jenin, a city in the West Bank, just to get right back into the mood. The team of undercover agents field commanded by Eli (Yaakov Zada-Daniel) is trying to find out who goes to the money that a gang of robbers is taking from the pockets of the Palestinian Authority.
And while the investigation continues thanks to the capture of one of the robbers we discover that Nurit (Rona-Lee Shimon) e History (Idan Amedi) have carried on their relationship and get married under the blessing of the ex-Captain Ayub (Itzik Cohen), now promoted and in charge of managing the clandestine overseas operations. The Captain himself has to go to Brussels to support a source of him and asks Doron, expelled from the unit and full of resentment and repressed violence, to accompany him to protect him and to distract himself a little.
Doron is the usual. On the contrary, even worse if possible: unable to socialize, to recognize that he has an anger management problem, grumpy with his former colleagues and disrespectful of the hierarchy nevertheless he is always pampered and cared for and everyone is ready to close both eyes pretending not to see that his problems are a risk for himself and for those around him.
In any case, even with a thousand faults, it is the only one that when the chaos in the Belgian capital he is able to extract a spider from the hole and does everything to save the life of his friend Ayub, who has fallen into a trap and been kidnapped by yet another terrorist cell that claims free Palestine.
The story continues on two tracks that, at least at the beginning, seem intent on never meeting having nothing in common. On one side the team looking for Ayub; on the other Maya Benjamin (Lucy Ayoub), a young Arab woman married to an Israeli and an excellent undercover policewoman for the Tel Aviv police drug squad. However, Maya has a serious flaw: she is the sister of one of Ayub’s kidnappers and for this reason she is suspected and taken into custody by the Israeli services, which are not so subtle.
Maya’s life will change radically a little by choice, a little by obligation during the season until he renounces his recent past to embrace his family again and, perhaps, the Palestinian cause, disappointed by Doron who will play dirty and without any mercy to get the information he needs.
It would seem like the usual thing but it’s not like that. This time, there’s more at stake than defeating the enemy and protecting friends. Beyond the journeys between Lebanon and Syria, the violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians and the usual, delirious, revolutionary lions with kefiah and the Ak47, the fourth season of Fauda showcases, even more than in past seasons, the terrible inner conflicts of the various characters on stage baring their tormented souls. The team members, but not only them, are grappling with some sort of showdown with their consciences to which they cannot escape. The dilemma is always the same: how to reconcile work and love, career and family. This time, however, doubt grips all the members of the unit, determined to end a job that is dragging them into the abyss of madness.
One by one the soldiers are confronted not so much with the fear of death as with the inability to not being able to stop throwing and taking blows in the eternal struggle between good and evil. Needing to put an end to the spiral of violence, they put on the plate the need for a normal life alongside the people who love them and who, albeit with a thousand difficulties, look after them lovingly.
A topic seen and reviewed in similar series, of course. But treated differently. In the license plate series Netflix the tiredness is evident, on both sides of the barricade, on the faces of the protagonists who move like automatons, squeezed by superiors who have no mercy. The fragility with which men trained to kill confess their pain is truly thrilling and maybe it is the best part of all this fourth season.
How beautifulbut this is a trademark of the Israeli series, they are the female characters. The soldiers’ companions, in a frank confrontation with each other, come to the conclusion that they can do nothing but accept what their mates are admitting the inability to leave them to lead a normal life. But the resignation that permeates their words has nothing heroic nor does it make them appear victims. It is simply the awareness of how terrible love can be under certain conditions.
On the other hand, on the Palestinian front, beyond the ancestral concept of the family, also i bad guys show that they have a heart that is guarded by women: mothers, wives and sisters.
Marvelous, in this, is the character of Maya who abandons what she had built away from home to return to her family, to her origins.
The way in which the characters are treated has something masterful about it. Their fragility, their changes, their evolutions (and not involutions even if it might appear so) are real, concrete, have nothing stereotyped and are very engaging. In some cases even moving. And they make up for the story, which is not very homogeneous, which between rather evident ups and downs gives the impression that the authors have reached the end of the line with the creative path. While the idea of moving the action to Brussels is a breath of fresh air Doron’s journey with Maya is pretty much the same as he and Dr. Shirin have seen in the first two seasons confirming once again that it is in the chorus that the series gives its best and not in following Doron’s actions.
Even the construction of the finale, unfortunately, is weak. Yet another madness that closes the circle of violence and death of the team of Israeli soldiers would have deserved more care to pay homage to the protagonists. A bit like it was done for Homeland, in conclusion. Not an epic ending because it would have been inconsistent. But not even so anonymous, albeit tragic. Because the conclusion of this great epic available on Netflix is right in intent but wrong, unfortunately, in the realization.
