How to conceal oneself

Steven Spielberg is – unfairly – much derided by university film classes and student of film, his easy populism, with typical focus on an ending that satisfies the audience, grating to those who consider themselves serious auteurs.  Even the harrowing, brilliant Schindler’s List, that largely eschewed the frequent charge of sentimentalism, had a chink of light that burned away until the darkness was vanquished – hope and goodness outlasting the evil, if at terrible cost.

Spielberg’s heyday was the late ‘70s to the mid-‘90s but then he succumbed to the same disease of mediocrity that had rendered lame Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas (though nowhere near as debilitating).  From worthy dramas such as the solid Amistad to fun capers like the overlong Catch Me If You Can, Spielberg never really recaptured his previous flair.  When the script wasn’t up to scratch, this could result in The Terminal – which was – and the pitiful fourth movie starring Indiana Jones.  Even his latest, involving Tin-Tin, which many said was a character born to be taken to the silver screen by Spielberg, was so-so when if finally arrived. Each slip made those languishing in obscurity more smug.

The chief criticism of being entertaining but not thought-provoking much irritate Spielberg.  Schindler’s List and Amistad did not silence the barking fully.  So we come to Munich in 2005, recalling the killing of the Palestinian terrorists in the Black September group in reciprocity for their murdering of many of the Israeli sports team during the 1972 Munich Olympics.  Given Spielberg’s background, this was a subject close to his heart.  On TV, I missed the first half-hour, yet was gripped by the remainder from the moment I tuned in to BBC2.  There was a heavyweight cast.  Eric Bana, Ciarán Hinds, Daniel Craig (who’s done a similar role to this in the World War Two drama Defiance), Mathieu Kassowitz, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Geoffrey Rush.  Past and future Bond villain actors Michael Lonsdale and Mathieu Amalric feature as shadowy fulcrums, with a barbed father-son relationship thrown in to boot.  The 1970s decade was well re-created in all the locations of where they went.  I cannot speak from personal experience yet it looked convincing.

Some directors/producers would have done the film as a Jewish Death Wish but Spielberg handles the caveats and contentions in a considered way.  The irony is hard to miss that the three people on the hit squad who begin to have reservations about killing in cold blood (even though the victims have terrorist backgrounds of connections), all die from forces as mysterious as themselves.  Though Israeli people applaud them, there is little glory in the execution of their missions, the violence being messy, gruesome (at one point a wrenched arm, separated from the disintegrated body hangs from what is left of the ceiling) and chaotic, endangering or killing those who are not in Black September.  Each death damages their humanity a bit more, until the main protagonist, Avner (Bana) becomes extremely paranoid, fearing he will be taken out as he has taken out.  When informed that their destruction of the Black September leadership might have been counter-productive by elevating more extremist, unhinged figures to position of authority within the organisation, it eats away at them.  Not so the Mossad chief Ephraim (Rush), who shrugs, “Should I not cut my fingernails if they grow back?”

There is one unintentionally parodic moment when Avner has intercourse with his wife, as he does so recalling the botched rescue attempt of the Israeli Olympic hostages, flinging copious amounts of sweat off him as if he was a killer whale breaching the pool surface at Seaworld. Sex produces sweat but not sluicing out of yourself as if you were Old Faithful blowing your top in Yellowstone Park.  Take away the flashbacks and it’s like The Comic Strip Presents…

Two questions are the heart of the movie is ‘how do you react to terrorism’ and ‘ how do you deal with terrorists’.  There is talk of arresting the Palestinians and trying them in court as happened with Adolf Eichmann.  Robert (Kassowitz) argues that because one has been hated for 2,000 years (though I would advance that total by a further 500 annum) doesn’t justify any action of yours.  How do avoid becoming that what you hate, in substance if not specifics, is mooted.  Carl (Hinds) brings up the fact, in a roundabout manner, that the creation of Israel was accelerated by Jewish terrorism.  He is said to sound like a double-agent by the blinkered, fanatical Steve (Craig). 

The picture ends on a shot of the New York skyline with the then recently completed Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, asking us what would we do; what action would we support?  With the first anniversary of the assassination of Osama bin Laden just past, that is a message that resonates even more powerfully.  Munich is constructed in a fashion that it does not seem like a Spielberg movie and maybe that was exactly Spielberg’s intention.