Movie Review of MUNICH

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Steven Spielberg´s "Munich" attracted a storm of controversy before anyone saw it. Its polarizing subject matter divided people the way that Mel Gibson´s "The Passion of the Christ" did. Would Spielberg demonize the Palestinians, the Israelis, or both? Would Spielberg lionize the Palestinians, the Israelis, or both?

Gibson´s approach to marketing "The Passion" was to attack people who hadn´t said anything (positive or negative) about his movie in order to preach to the choir of fundamentalists, evangelists, and other die-hard faithfuls. Therefore, a movie that was ostensibly made about God and Christ´s love was sold using hate as an undercurrent. My favorite "Passion" pre-release moment was when Gibson appeared on Jay Leno´s "The Tonight Show" and said that he forgave all the naysayers--never mind the fact that they were expressing concerns about his confrontational, boorish behavior and not about his movie.

Spielberg chose to say as little as possible prior to releasing "Munich", but in the process, other people speaking on his behalf generated plenty of bile, too. "Time" magazine put Spielberg and "Munich" on its 12 December 2005 cover with the headline "Spielberg´s Secret Masterpiece"; the headline angered journalists who either were jealous of "Time" magazine´s exclusive access to Spielberg and the movie or were appalled to see a bold declaration for a movie that was only "average to very good" in their opinions. Others who saw the movie attacked it for not agreeing with their policy positions without discussing whether or not "Munich" advanced logical, credible arguments about Spielberg´s views. Despite this mess, two widows of the massacred Israeli athletes have said that the movie does honor to their husbands´ memories.

"Munich" begins with a brief overview of the kidnapping and massacring of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. This includes a survey of Arab/Palestinian and Israeli responses while people watch the events unfold on TV. Emphasizing the West Germans´ ineptitude, this opening includes a segment that has the Black September terrorists demanding West-German soldiers to abort an attempted assault because the Palestinians could see the West Germans on TV.

In response to the killings, Prime Minister Golda Meir and her staff decide that Israel should kill eleven Palestinians. Avner (Eric Bana), a former Meir bodyguard, heads a team that includes the trigger-happy Steve (Daniel Craig), Carl (Ciaran Hinds) the clean-up guy, Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz) the bomb-maker, and Hans (Hanns Zischler) the documents forger. Occasionally, they receive instructions and money from Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), but mostly, Avner and his team are on their own. They discover the whereabouts of their targets by buying information from a Frenchman who is "politically promiscuous".

The mission takes an extreme toll on Avner´s team. With the exception of the gung-ho Steve, every avenging Jew is troubled by the disturbing nature of their work even though they think that they believe in Israel´s cause. As his colleagues are also killed one by one, Avner´s mind begins to unravel, culminating in his departure from Israel for a life of peace with his wife and daughter in Brooklyn.

Like "Schindler´s List", "Munich" is populated by several important and memorable characters/performances, but also like "Schindler´s List", "Munich" is dominated by one protagonist. Eric Bana gave good impressions in "Black Hawk Down", "Hulk", and "Troy", but this is the first time that he is front and center in a major production. He acquits himself nicely as an actor who both looks like he can carry a movie on his own and acts with wide range (unlike his "Troy" co-star Orlando Bloom, who never "looks" the part and has the range of a mannequin). Aided in part by the way his hair is combed, Bana makes Avner´s trajectory from determined defender to haunted prey a palpable journey for the audience. Bana is a good physical performer, as evidenced by how he handles himself during the action sequences. He is equally adept at acting with only subtle facial expressions; when he tenses his cheek muscles and when his eyes stare blankly beyond the movie screen, you sense that his character has sunk into a quagmire that Israeli and Palestinian politicians never imagined could exist.

Spielberg´s strength as a storyteller lies in his command of communicating ideas through movement. Therefore, actors or objects in motion convey much more than actors sitting down talking to each other. As such, the pummeling dread of Avner and his men at work forces viewers to share in the characters´ downward spiral. In witnessing the horrendous effects of cloak-and-dagger assassination work, one understands why Avner argues that arresting guilty terrorists is better than responding to terrorists with more terrorism.

Perhaps the story´s key scene is a dialogue between Avner and a Palestinian. Both men and their associates happen to be in the same "safe house" courtesy of Avner´s French contact. (This is the French guy´s idea of a joke.) While inhabiting a no-man´s land, the Palestinian explicates understandable reasons concerning the Palestinian desire to reclaim the area that Jews seized in the creation of Israel. Avner disagrees with the Palestinian, of course, but he realizes that the Palestinian´s rationale was used by the Jews themselves when they were without a homeland. (Prior to 1948, present-day Israel was Palestine, a territory administered by the United Kingdom. After World War II, Jews from Europe flooded into Palestine and mostly forcibly created a Jewish homeland.) This doesn´t mean that the movie condemns or sympathizes with either the Palestinian or the Israeli side. Rather, Spielberg has taken a step back to examine ironic parallels; he does so by focusing on the lives of individuals rather than perching himself up on high to observe humanity dispassionately as a series of "great" events.

The movie isn´t without its problems. On the heels of a tense, effective opening, the expository scenes that establish Avner´s mission feel mechanical, artificial, and rushed. The script is filled with rhetorical remarks ("Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.") without stating much that is meaningful, and the actors´ lack of conviction during the first forty-five minutes impairs a viewer´s belief in the material. There are too many inappropriate jokes ("I want receipts!"). It takes too long for Avner to meet his French contacts (a meeting between Avner and a German woman could´ve been cut out of the movie). The movie includes at least one awkward attempt at foreshadowing; while discussing placing bombs under bed mattresses, Carl mentions a story about how a paranoid fellow wound up sleeping in his closet. Yes, we eventually see Avner retreat to a closet at night. (This might´ve worked had the movie dropped Carl´s anecdote.) While each assassination is presented forcefully and skillfully, we don´t have to see so many killings to get the point. A scene involving Steve and a Palestinian changing radio stations should´ve been cut from the movie, too.

As I´ve written elsewhere, Spielberg´s primary preoccupation is with troubled father-son bonds. In "Munich", Avner has to live up to his father´s reputation (his father was a war hero). However, his biological father is never seen on screen, and it´s apparent that Avner never had a strong male role model. Avner´s mission is populated by potential father-figures (Ephraim, Carl, and "Papa") who all fail him. Avner´s mother figures are poor parents, too. Prime Minister Golda Meir sends him on the mission that shatters his mind and spirit, and his biological mother, who once abandoned him when he was a child, refuses to hear what her son has to say, preferring to spout ideology.

Unlike the usual Spielberg movie, "Munich" does not have a "happy" ending. (This might please a lot of people who--inexplicably, in my opinion--think that "darker is automatically better".) Avner never completes his mission, and he is not re-united with any of the father figures that he meets. Avner is re-united with his wife and daughter, but he is shell-shocked from his mission. This is the first time in a long while that Spielberg´s "little boy" protagonist remains unclaimed at the end of a movie.

Spielberg made "Munich" with his usual team of behind-the-scenes associates. Michael Kahn continues to do ace editing work while working on a Moviola--in other words, Kahn still edits actual film negatives rather than editing with a computer, though I´m sure some optical effects (such as dissolves and fades) are completed by Spielberg with a computer. Once again, Spielberg decided to trust John Williams with the music score despite the latter´s difficulties in dealing with the material during a tight post-production schedule. As with "Minority Report" and "War of the Worlds", Williams opted for effective low, disquieting rumblings for the most part, resorting to prominent melodies only when the movie cuts to re-enactments of what took place in Munich. Frequent Spielberg-collaborators Rick Carter (production design) and Joanna Johnston (costume design) re-created the 1970s with authority. Ben Burtt (sound design) and Richard Hymns (sound editing) created a soundtrack that unsettles the viewer with dreadful silences suddenly punctured by unexpected gunshots and explosions. (No matter how many action sequences I see, gunshots and explosions in Spielberg´s movies are still unsettling. When I saw "Munich", numerous audience members jumped or gasped several times:
--during the opening sequence, when a fiery explosion in the distance takes place at the Munich airport
--when Avner and Robert shoot their first target
--when Avner is nearly killed by a massive explosion in a hotel
--when Avner and his team engage in a shoot-out in Lebanon
--when a member of Avner´s team is killed in an explosion.)

The movie´s strongest technical aspect is the cinematography by Janusz Kaminski. The negative has been drained of color so that the movie looks like something that was shot during the 1970s. The muted, "wet" hues are drab in a ´70s specific way. I complained about how he flooded the camera with lights for "The Terminal", practically rendering the movie unwatchable due to excessive lens-flaring. For "Munich", the lens-flaring is generally kept to a minimum, so the visual design is not distracting. What´s more, the hand-held camerawork is motivated by characters´ points-of-view as well as the immediacy of Avner´s team in action.

Not only does the movie look like something that was shot during the 1970s, it also echoes movies made during that decade. Several reviews link "Munich" to thrillers like "The Day of the Jackal" (1973). I was particularly struck by the movie´s numerous references to Francis Ford Coppola´s works from the 1970s. Spielberg´s movies are noted for their allusions, with his successful movies transcending their allusions ("Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark") and his unsuccessful movies struggling beneath the weight of their allusions ("War of the Worlds" was Spielberg parodying himself).

"Munich" can be considered a descendent of "Apocalypse Now" (1979). Both movies are about their protagonists´ journeys into the heart of darkness as they exterminate with extreme prejudice. The protagonists are sent on dangerous missions that are officially disavowed by their own governments. They are given only small teams and not much real help, and they are told to keep to their objectives without minding the big picture (in "Munich", Avner is told to keep out of Arab countries and the Soviet bloc; in "Apocalypse Now", Willard is supposed to stay out of the Vietnam War as a whole). Both protagonists share a meal with a large French family that distances itself from governments and fights only to protect its own interests (see "Apocalypse Now Redux"). In the end, both protagonists abandon military/clandestine service while basically losing their sanity.

"Munich" echoes "The Conversation" (1974) in a scene with Avner tearing up his room, looking for hidden explosives. (At the end of "The Conversation", the protagonist tears up his apartment looking for audio bugs.) One other Coppola reference in "Munich" is the frantic intercutting between Avner and his wife having sex and Avner´s nightmarish imaginings of the Munich massacre. This sequence mirrors the intercutting between a baptism and a series of murders in "The Godfather" (1972).

As it is, "Munich" is too long by about twenty minutes, and that one instance of foreshadowing (the characters talking about sleeping in a closet) sticks out like a sore thumb. Still, the movie very publicly questions Israeli policy. The American political landscape has gotten to the point that no candidate running for office dares to scold Israel for fear of losing Jewish votes and Jewish monetary contributions. (Having lived in New York state for four years while at Cornell University, I saw first-hand how young spoiled Jews always mention the Holocaust and racism if anyone ever raised criticisms--founded or unfounded--about Jews and Israel.) Perhaps it took a Jew in Spielberg´s position to wonder about the human and moral costs of Israel´s methods of survival, but the fact remains that Spielberg was the one who said it.

"Munich" gets a "9" on DVD Town´s "10"-scale.

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