When the helicopter was shot down by a missile, Gitai found himself staring death in the face. His story forms the core of Kippur. Gitai gives the film a plotless feel. He is much more concerned with the claustrophobic uncertainties of this conflict, its absent sense of direction and control. Thus the horizons of this war are limited to the main character's own vision.
Tanks drive aimlessly back and forth, firing at an invisible enemy.
Noise is just as suddenly replaced by stillness, intense action by boredom and inactivity. We rarely see combat, only its aftermath, and the wounded men who are ferried out by the medical helicopter team. Gitai eschews romanticizing the conflict, resists glorifying the men who are reduced to wading through knee-deep mud to rescue their comrades, avoids stepping back to comprehend what it is all about. He pushes our face up against war to show how mundane, frightening and arbitrary it can be. Not for him the sentimentalities of Saving Private Ryan, nor the reamlike reverie of The Thin Red Line.