Controversies
surrounding films can swirl up like clouds of dust and debris obscuring a
film’s content from its potential audience. Munich, Steven Spielberg’s
account of the impact of the terror attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972
Olympic Games, prompted a flurry of contradictory reports about the film’s
highly incendiary topic. Unfortunately, this storm of confusion and hearsay as
well as Steven Spielberg’s avoidance of promotion and interviews stifled Munich’s
box office performance and critical reception. Over eleven years later, now
that the debates attending its release have subsided, Munich reveals
itself as one the most powerful and nuanced films about terrorism since the
September 11th attacks, a profound reflection on the consequences of revenge,
and Steven Spielberg’s greatest film of the last twenty years.
In the fall of 2005,
within the formative years of George W. Bush’s War on Terror, Steven Spielberg
adapted a novel about the Israeli government’s alleged covert operation to
target and assassinate members of the Palestinian terrorist organization, Black
September, responsible for planning the murder of eleven Israeli athletes
participating in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. Opening the film
with the first of four segments documenting the Black September massacre,
Spielberg masterfully blends a heart-pounding reconstruction of the ambush on
the Israeli dormitory with a montage of people all over the world observing the
events unfold on live television. During a meeting among Israeli Prime Minister
Golda Meir and her advisors following the Munich attack, she sanctions a secret
retaliation mission by announcing, “Every civilization finds it necessary to
negotiate compromises with its own values.” Eric Bana portrays Avner, a member
of the Israeli secret service, Mossad, and Meir’s former bodyguard in a
performance that should have propelled him into mainstream success. Meir and
her advisors select Avner to lead a small group of covert operatives who will
carry out assassinations on Black September targets living in Western Europe.
Geoffrey Rush plays Ephraim, Avner’s contact within the Israeli government, and
tucks a dry, cynical humor into his efficient explanation and analysis of
Avner’s task. Spielberg draws out themes of family and community with multiple
scenes of meals shared among Avner, his team, and his contacts. The film swells
with a warm, delicate intimacy that belies the deadly nature of Avner’s
mission. As an audience we face both the calculated brutality of the attack on
the Israeli athletes as well as the methodical assassinations of Black
September operatives. Through the actions of Avner’s team and the resulting
consequences of those actions, we witness the true price of a life lived in the
service of revenge.
With Munich,
Spielberg confidently tackles a sprawling epic focusing on the geopolitical
realities of a pivotal moment in the twentieth century, but enriches his story
with a loving and cautious eye for the details that make our families, homes,
and values worth living and dying for. A bracing vitality pushes through Munich
as Spielberg operates at the top of his game and delivers a film of consequence
that manages to be both deeply personal and searingly relevant to the state of the
world. A prominent Jewish American director broaching the topic of the
Israel/Palestine conflict and framing a story around a very real terrorist
attack and an unconfirmed retaliation plot may have been a tough sell for
audiences and critics in 2005, but in taking on this project, Spielberg allows
us the opportunity to reflect on what happens when we compromise the values
that define us as a people.
- John Parsell
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