Steven Spielberg's MUNICH
Spielberg's MUNICH
The artistically dubious and the morally dubious: is Spielberg's MUNICH a "discussion" of anything?
Some questions from Chris Knipp
Critics discuss how Spielberg's Munich has "the weight of a moral argument" (Dargis). This view is that the main counterterrorist Avner's growing self-doubts confer upon him humanity that will assuage the general (non-Jewish, non-Zionist, non-Israeli?) audience's doubts about the violent Israeli mission to avenge the Black September Munich killings that the film describes.
How does this ever add up to more than just saying that revenge murders are okay as long as you feel compunctions beforehand about doing them?
In a violent world and under severe moral pressure that may indeed be a necessary position. There are circumstances in which violent action must be taken, even by the most moral persons.
But was this one of them? Has Israel's subsequent policy leading up to the partitioning and occupation of most of Palestinian land, leaving those territories that remain to the Palestinians the status of nothing but Bantustans, now surrounded by a billion-dollar high wall that cuts off the best resources and makes the Palestinians the inhabitants of a large open-air concentration camp -- shown moral wisdom? Has Palestinian violence been lessened by any of Israeli's actions against the Palestinians?
Is Munich any way of presenting a debate about all that? For that matter, does a violent, vivid action movie, even one that has quiet moments of self-doubt, give us the best opportunity for moral discussion? Does it raise the issues? Does it present alternatives? Does it present the larger picture? Though Palestinians don't get a story; the Jews do. Spielberg is a Jew. His two writers are Jews. And his main characters are Jews. As Dargis says, there was "an obvious effort made to ensure that the Palestinian terrorists are more than faceless thugs (they are thugs with faces and speeches)." Is that good enough?
Anthony Lane asserts in his review of Munich that Spielberg has shown in the past that he isn't a political filmmaker. So perhaps his possibility of conducting a "discussion" of moral issues is limited not only by his predilection for what Dargis called "emotional bullying and pop thrills" but by his very choice of material for this movie: the Black September massacre at the Munich Olympics and the Israeli campaign to gradually wipe out the perpetrators. There is the pull of making a thriller. There is the pull of making a film based on real events that feels accurate and seems like real events as well as closely referring to them. Does Spielberg manage to juggle these confliction functions?
Due to the secretive nature of the operation and the fact that due to the Israeli government's refusal to reveal any involvement in it, not everything is known; hence, to cope with the story's uncertainties the best method of presentation would perhaps be not a fiction movie at all but a documentary done by investigative journalists. Is this not so? Is the dramatic form misleading?
The moral issues involved would seem likely to come in as a weak third or fourth element after all this, and would be quite overwhelmed by the thriller, the recreation of real events, and the concern with unknown elements, were it not for the quiet moments of self-doubt the main character, Avner, exists as a character primarily to interject. These doubts, Dargis and other viewers feel, (as she wrote) "give Munch the weight of a moral argument. It's an argument, though, that has little to do with whether Israel has a right to exist or whether the Palestinians have the right of return. Only this matters: blood has its costs, even blood shed in righteous defense."
What's the discussion Dargis talks about, then? And finally, what is the purpose of this movie? Is a counterterrorist better than a terrorist? The word "counterterrorist" sounds nicer but masks that he too is carrying out acts of terror. This issue, though a relatively shadowy one, can be related to the issue of capital punishment. A majority of the world's nations have doubts about capital punishment (122 have abolished it, 72 still retain it, according to Amnesty International). But capital punishment, anyway, is formal governmental killing. Whether or not it is morally defensible or practically effective as a deterrent, it is an act of law, not of violent assassination. "Counterterrorism" is different in that it perpetuates not only killing ("an eye for an eye") but also acts of terror.
Perhaps Spielberg has not abandoned the "emotional bullying and pop thrills" Dargis refers to, in making Munich; it could be that he has simply added a sympathetic central character, a state assassin who has doubts.
This is not to say that Munich proves to lack complexity in detail and contains no technically effective action sequences. Spielberg is a filmmaker of such skill that everyone who loves cinema has to see what he does. And I would much rather watch this than War of the Worlds. But it means that the film may lack the moral value or the political sophistication its advocates lay claim to for it.
Note: these are simply polemical questions for other viewers to consider and answer for themselves. I have not yet seen the movie and have not decided what the answers are myself.
One of the Best Movies of 2005
I can't even come close to earlier posts regarding this movie, but I do want to add my opinion that Munich is one of the best movies of the year for its intelligent, immensely personal way that Speilberg has presented a dramatic thriller. The psychological and personal tension that exists throughout this movie and the intimate family touches of many of the characters makes this a compelling, human movie even though it deals with so much violence. With only three very minor complaints consisting of the inconsistent lack of subtitles in the beginning portion of the movie, the difficult, disjointed connection to the flashback sequence on the plane, and the somewhat difficult to believe firefight that occurs midway throught movie, this movie was a spectacular, brilliant production.
THIS TIME IT IS A REVIEW OF THE MOVIE.....
SPIELBERG'S MUNICH
Violence and muddle
Review by Chris Knipp
Spielberg is a popular artist of high stature but problematic output. He's all over the map, he proved early his ability to make blockbusters, he tries and fails, he can charm and annoy and bore and move and edify you, and more often than not he tries to do several of these things at once (though of course he doesn't try to bore you but when he fails in other aims, he does). What Spielberg tries to do in Munich is to make you think about the futility of violence while thrilling you with an action movie focused on a string of international revenge assassinations. No doubts about whether this is a feasible plan are going to keep people from flocking to the movie, but it's still fundamentally contradictory.
Munich is, one may say, about the Arab-Israeli conflict. It's about Palestinian rage, and Israeli revenge. But the director is an American Jew, and the movie is primarily about the latter theme -- Israeli revenge -- and about some of the consequences of a dedication to vengeance. Spielberg treats this violence-revenge-violence-revenge cycle as if it began in the early 1970's when the radical Black September PLO splinter group held hostage a large part of the Israeli Olympic team, leading to their deaths.
This is where the movie begins, with a montage of vivid "recreations" of the Olympic village break-in; the violence; the stunned international, and above all American, media response. That this is highly fictionalized is masked by showing actual TV footage. It's a massacre. Or is it? Actually, most of the captured Israelis died in a melee with German sharpshooters at an airport; but "massacre" is used several times in one scene. In the movie, the "counter-terrorist" (oxymoron? imploding concept?) team kills nine of the eleven they're assigned to eliminate.
After the "massacre" we get the Israeli government meetings, with PM Golda Meir the primary figure. She is the prime mover -- setting up the revenge team, headed by Avner (Eric Bana). Bana is the hero. He's a big tall hunk, in fact, previously The Hulk. With a hero father, a dignified mother, and a pregnant wife -- and, in time, a troubled moral consciousness. But that comes later, much later, after a lot of killing. Most of the movie, and most of its interest, is in the killing, the hits, the moves from country to country -- focusing on Europe, avoiding the Middle East (except for Beirut, where Israel has done damage before and since).
Munich is demonstrably a portrait of moral self-questioning, since it culminates in Avner's anguish, sleeplessness, troubled sex, and haggard look. But the movie doesn't provide a history of wrongs done to Palestinians, or any detailed history of events before 1972. The Palestinians have some voice in the movie. A group of the most radical ones -- by a strange, staged irony -- even spend a night in the same "safe house" with the Israeli assassin team and a debate happens between Avner and an angry, but vividly human Arab. When terrorists die in Munich, their families are seen weeping. One target has a little girl. But as one viewer remarked to me, the Palestinians get about five minutes to express their point of view. The movie is two hours and forty-four minutes long. The rest of the doubts about the justice of the Israelis' actions are left to be expressed exclusively by the Israelis.
One of the greatest artistic faults is that the dialogue is so often ploddingly expository, the doubts so repetitiously enunciated. Aren't these Israeli covert hit men professionals? Why do they question each other so much?
At the end, the disillusioned Avner learns that the Palestinians on his hit list are Palestinians active against Israel, but not necessarily connected to Munich; and that his team of hit men was only one of several. He was only a pawn in a game. But this is after the fact. The game Munich's audience watches is an assassination story, with character conflicts and opposed viewpoints on the team, successes and failures, and a sometimes clumsy struggle to find out where the men on the list are and get to them.
Because this is primarily from the Jewish, not the Arab, point of view, there is much attention to the fact that the Israelis try to avoid collateral damage, even as in many instances they obviously shoot down innocent victims. Things get very muddled. One can't fault Spielberg for choosing the fascinating French actor Matthieu Amalric and the historic Michel Lonsdale (who is practically a national treasure) to represent the French whom Avner deals with. Another interesting Frenchman, actor/director Matthieu Kassovitz, does good work as the toy maker, Robert, who messes up and has doubts and may be a suicide when he blows himself up. Why Avner relies so heavily on one French family for both material and information isn't made clear in the movie. Louis (Amlaric) says they do not deal with governments; but when Avner pays so much money, he must surely have guessed a government was involved. Why pay $200,000 a head for locations of target Palestinians, always to Louis and "Papa" (Lonsdale)? Aren't there any other sources, perhaps even cheaper ones?
The director may deserve respect for annoying advocates of both the Jewish and the Arab-Palestinian camps. But is that proof of an authentically honest, intelligent, or even intelligible position -- or more just the fate of the liberal stance of a muddled seeker who begins with a bias he can't possibly shake off? Spielberg has every reason and every right to question Israeli policy, but he is in no position to question the existence of Israel, or to see the Palestinian dilemma from the inside.
Mohammad Daoud, the leader of Black September who plotted the Munich kidnappings, is still alive and was not consulted by the team that made this movie. The final shot shows the Twin Towers, as if to imply that their destruction resulted from Palestinian rage. But no Palestinians were involved in 9/11, any more than Saddam Hussein was.
Chris Knipp's Commentary or Review
In reading Chris Knipp's Review, it is somewhat difficult to separate out political commentary from a review of the movie or perhaps it's deliberate that we get some of a mix of both. Is the movie flawed because it wasn't balanced and focused too much on the Israeli's? There is too much talking by professionals who in some cases really aren't (considering who the main character and the bomb making are)? It would be helpful for the discussion to revolve around both cinematographic merits as well as the more nebulous fact and fiction issues. In some ways, this review is as Speilberg-like in its approach to the topic of the Middle East controversy.
Re: THIS TIME IT IS A REVIEW OF THE MOVIE.....
So, I guess you finally watched it. Can't say that I'm surprised by your reaction since your earlier post pretty much detailed your mindset. You also see it as an "actioneer" and just tried to lump it with fluff like The Bourne Identity which I can't relate to so I won't comment on that.
The final shot shows the Twin Towers, as if to imply that their destruction resulted from Palestinian rage. But no Palestinians were involved in 9/11, any more than Saddam Hussein was.
The final shot could be interpreted in more ways than one but the Middle Eastern conflict has a lot to do with just about every recent act of violence that has taken place against the U.S. and its allies. The act itself might not have been a result of a collaborative effort between the radical Islamic factions but there's no arguing that the hatred that exists against the U.S. primarily stems from our support of Israel.