MUNICH (Dec 2005)
Director: Steven Spielberg.
Writers: George Jonas, Tony Kushner, Eric Roth.
Starring: Eric Bana, Daniel
Craig, Ciarán Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler, Lynn Cohen, Geoffrey
Rush, Ayelet Zurer, Gila Almagor, Michael Lonsdale, Mathieu Amalric, Moritz Bleibtreu.
MUNICH is not about Munich. Nor is it about events which followed the massacre of
Israeli athletes. It is about Steven Spielberg's ego. And how far into Audacious
he can drive it without becoming Oliver Stone.
This
movie's tagline boasts, "The world was watching in 1972 as 11 Israeli athletes
were murdered at the Munich Olympics. This is the story of what happened next."
Well, not exactly. It's what author George Jonas, screenwriters Tony Kushner and
Eric Roth, and film-maker Steven Spielberg think happened next.
MUNICH opens with a brutally graphic hostage-taking sequence, Palestinian guerilla
group Black September killing and cudgeling the Israeli barracks into submission;
news programs worldwide replaying that famous footage of the masked terrorist
on the balcony we all remember watching obliviously as kids.
But before
this sequence - four glib words: Inspired By True Events - simultaneously endowing
the movie with faux import whilst granting Spielberg "artistic license";
in other words, granting him the impunity to lie off the hook. The source material
for this film being solely Jonas' self-admittedly uncorroborated book (Vengeance:
The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team), makes this movie as
much a fantasy as RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.
As
Lew Wallace's decorative details in Ben-Hur: A Tale of The Christ (1880)
achieved "fact" status simply through their compelling documentation
in a powerful work of art (for example, he gives names and a number - three -
to the "wise men" who attended Jesus' birth, his information culled
from extra-Biblical sources, yet now regarded as "gospel" in every nativity
scene, religious pageant and christmas cartoon, even though the supposed Christian
source tome - the King James Bible - is devoid of those details), it is only a
matter of time before Spielberg's fiction will be regarded as doctrine if no further
documentation - or less compelling dramatic enactments - of these events is made.
(I doubt many people remember Michael Anderson's SWORD OF GIDEON, 1986
- lesser movie, from same book.)
Eric
Bana (still trim, taut and TROY-riffic from his last feature) is Avner,
a Jewish family man and Mossad agent, called upon by Israeli Prime Minister Golda
Mier (Lynn Cohen) to lead a covert team in blood-revenge for the Munich massacre.
Much is made over Mier's rationalization of morality - every MUNICH reviewer
revels in flaunting her line - yet Mier only verbalizes (euphemistically, at best)
how every individual behaves in every situation they encounter - by "negotiating
compromises with their own values," i.e. using "circumstantial morality."
There is no Kantian "outside morality"; it is all Nietzschean
nihilism. Truth cuts to cure. Was it not blood retribution that George W. Bush
called for (admittedly less articulately) in retaliation against September 2001's
terrorist attacks? Did not America rally behind him like maniacal rednecks out
for Middle Eastern blood?
Where
was your morality then, Christians?
More
intriguing than morality conundrums is the mindset that would allow a person to
pawn themselves out to a government who admit openly that it will deny your existence
- and probably try to make you truly non-existent - simply for performing
a duty for your country. (Maybe the government stance on anyone sociopathic enough
to accept its "uncivilized" assignments in the first place, is to summarily
excise those unbalanced personalities from society.) Whether the vengeance squad
questioned the morality of their actions is speculation, and is a storytelling
staple akin to anthropomorphizing animals: to add dramatic flesh to the plot and
to better identify with the characters - but can people who enter into such one-way
self-sacrifices be understood or "humanized" at all? Spielberg shies
away from these issues (which are intrinsic to a story of this nature, as it may
cast light on the motivation for both predators and prey). The film is already
dark - how scary could one more layer of darkness be?
Avner's
team, four misfits from various middle-class walks of life, includes Robert the
toymaker-turned-bombmaker (Mathieu Kassovitz, bearing a disturbing resemblance
to Arnold Horshack), who pulls the short straw to perform the first execution
with Avner. In a flustered scene, their hesitancy at pulling the triggers whilst
facing their target - questioning the target insistently with no defining answers
- illustrates that even with purchased "intelligence information," Avner
still has deep-rooted doubts as to whether their targets are the actual terrorists.
But again, we must ask: when the original Mossad agent dictated his tale to George
Jonas, did he merely add this trait to his personality to humanize himself? Or
did Jonas add this element to elicit sympathy for the "heroes"
exacting revenge - for without this hesitancy in killing, wouldn't that make them
as evil as the terrorists they were executing?
Constantly asking for
"more evidence" from Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush, as an evasive government
liaison), Avner's resolve at keeping his actions meaningful eventually deteriorates
after more killings, finding him negating his emotions and insouciantly extolling
his duty to wipe out even the more ruthless replacements to their killed targets.
Amongst
the furor of malfunctioning bombs and shootouts gone awry, Spielberg, as is his
familial wont, interjects with paternal themes: not only is Avner a new father
(Bana wrenches a brilliant tearful moment when he hears his daughter's first "dada"
over the phone), his European intelligence source is an underworld kingpin simply
known as "Papa" (surrounded by tranquil gardens and frolicking children,
yet exuding a dangerous serenity). Another Spielberg trademark does not come off
as suavely: seeing through his now-transparent ploy of imperiling children with
no payoff, dilutes the intensity of a sequence involving a girl-child and a booby-trapped
telephone. Oh, the unmitigated zero suspense.
There
is a sex scene disguised as an assassination (Avner's team kill a female assassin
who tries to seduce them into sparing her life), and an assassination disguised
as a sex scene (after his return home, Avner finds that in his most intimate moment
with his wife, he is flashing back to the grisly hostage assassinations); two
scenes which conjure roiling, visceral emotions in the viewer, Spielberg artfully
leading us to question whether we should be turned on or turned off.
Avner's
operatives complete 5 of the 11 killings before the movie - and, we presume, the
piecemeal intel the real-life assassins had to work with - runs out of steam. MUNICH's powerful performances, masterful cinematography, storytelling
and direction are tempered by its slipshod conclusion, which leaves no resolution
to the storyline (supposedly "true," so left dangling and expecting
forgiveness), and a hundred rhetorical questions in its wake: does retaliation
benefit economically or politically at all?; how does a retaliatory individual
or nation return to their former steady state?; will Arnold Horshack ever graduate?...
Spielberg takes great risks in some of his movies (SCHINDLER'S LIST, AMISTAD), in others, no risk at all (INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, JURASSIC PARK). In MUNICH, it is a potpourri of both, the woman exposing herself for sexual mercy is a risk, the child answering the phone is not; one of the risks is "revenge killing" but he palliates the risky concept with a "non-risk" by having both predators and prey in MUNICH
sport indeterminate Middle Eastern accents, assuring no alienation to his Stateside
countryfolk, with ruffled feathers belonging only to pundits unimportant to the
funding and distribution of the film. Israel's consul-general, Ehud Danoch, has
already lambasted the film as "problematic" and "superficial,"
which is understandable, for if Israelis were to accept the film as "truth,"
it would involve advocating "revenge killing" - and we KNOW that governments
don't ever play that card (wink wink…). Minority groups and outsiders to
the Hollywood system could whine over unfair depictions, but their picketing of
theatres and seeking of reparations would only lend impetus to the film in the
western-dominated avenues where it is slated to reap its income.
Anyway,
after the bloodlust directed at all Middle Easterners in the aftermath of 9/11
(in such an arbitrarily juvenile manner that Public Service Announcements had
to be aired actually describing the ideological, religious and national differences
between foreigners of Middle Eastern descent), how much does White America really
care about Arab nations assailing each other's jugulars - in a world INSPIRED
BY STEVEN SPIELBERG?
MUNICH (Dec 2005)
Director: Steven Spielberg.
Writers: George Jonas, Tony Kushner, Eric Roth.
Starring: Eric Bana, Daniel
Craig, Ciarán Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler, Lynn Cohen, Geoffrey
Rush, Ayelet Zurer, Gila Almagor, Michael Lonsdale, Mathieu Amalric, Moritz Bleibtreu.
