Review of Munich (2005) by Markb. — 24 Jan 2006

Four years ago, not long after it all happened, who would've guessed that the American filmmaker most obsessed--haunted, maybe--by the implications and aftermath of September 11, 2001 would be, not Oliver Stone or even Michael Moore, but.

..the Indiana Jones guy?!!? Four out of five of Steven Spielberg's post-9/11 films (the candy-coated, nostalgic Kennedy-era fluffball Catch Me If You Can being the lone exception) have dealt, implicitly or fairly obviously, with many of America's questions, debates, doubts and fears resulting from that date and continuing through today: the instant SF classic Minority Report examines the most ominous implications of the USA Patriot Act; the sweet, Capraesque fable The terminal, significantly set in an airport, shows people of all nationalities putting aside their fears and misgivings in order to help one another.

..and this year's earlier War of the Worlds is The Terminal's dark twin, a sour, cynical nightmare in which we trample one another, steal each other's cars, etc., in order to escape the terror from without.

Now comes Munich, Spielberg's meticulous, metaphorical examination of the ethics of a nation responding to what any sane person regardless of national origin would identify as an inhuman terrorist attack: where does self-defense end and revenge begin, are they sometimes one and the same, and, most significantly, what permanent effects does meeting-fire-with-fire have on those wielding the flamethrowers? Even though Spielberg and his writers, Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, are depicting a horrific real-life event and its aftermath, I believe that they're asking universal questions that apply to thousands of other historic confrontations.

That's why the intense criticism Spielberg has received from certain parts of the Jewish community--some of whom may just as soon have him give back all the awards he won for Schindler's List--are irrelevant.

I can certainly understand the feelings of anger and betrayal on many of their parts regarding the movie's humanizing of the Palestinian killers and their accomplices (expressed here at its peak by the tremendously touching final act performed by an otherwise particularly despicable individual when the protagonists retaliate).

..but making you movie's villains three-dimensional and even giving them some positive and sympathetic qualities is as old as drama itself; if Munich's enemies were to apply the proper emotional and esthetic distance, they'd see that to excoriate Munich on these grounds is to condemn Alfred Hitchcock for giving us Norman Bates.

And in a pivotal scene, in which Israelis and Palestinians discuss the homeland that each side sees as a sacred birthright, we not only see two sides irrevocably separated from one another by an issue that should at least philosophically be common ground, but also Spielberg's pet theme of "going home" in its most poignant expression.

Munich isn't perfect; it's a bit overlong, with more false endings than Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and while Eric Bana as the team leader communicates his character's psychological turmoil superbly, Daniel Craig (Layer Cake) isn't exactly bolstering my confidence in him as 007 Number 6.

(And the much-debated sequence near the end in which violence and marital sex bleed into one another had the misfortune to come out just a couple months afer A History of Violence, which used a similar juxtaposition to much more devastating effect.

) But Spielberg deserves an enormous amount of credit for asking a number of extremely tough questions and freely admitting he has no answers save maybe the Biblical admonition that there will always be wars and rumors of wars.

Whatever your political and religious affiliations and personal sympathies lie, it's hard to deny the power with which Spielberg conveys the very apolitical truism that "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves everybody blind and toothless".

And no, I don't believe the right wing press's short-sighted nonconclusion that Spielberg would just have the victims of terrorism just lie down, take it and die. Spielberg (who also gave us Saving Private Ryan, remember?) recognizes the necessity of taking decisive action, but is after an even more basic and fundamental human truth: that no matter how justified or even necessary the taking of vengeance is, inevitably it takes its toll on both the person performing the act and the nation ordering it.

That's the powerful message Spielberg delivers in Munich, and I think it's about time that those who are taking the film so personally quit heaping abuse on the messenger.