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 (122906)
A film of uncommon depth, intelligence, and sensitivity, Munich defies easy
labeling. Watching the movie is like reading a top-notch espionage thriller by
Le Carre or Deighton. Yet, at the same time, this is a visual experience. The
moral and ethical elements, layered atop a story that is ripe with suspense, put
to shame Hollywood's typical ventures into this genre. Munich is an eye-opener -
a motion picture that asks difficult questions, presents well-developed
characters, and keeps us white-knuckled throughout. It is one of the best films
of 2005.
I was eleven years old at the time of the 1972 Olympics, so my recall of events
is shaky. But I remember my parents being engrossed by the television coverage,
and I understood at the time that something terrible was happening. Some of that
coverage - news clips featuring Jim McKay, Peter Jennings, and others - is used
during a fifteen-minute prologue in Munich. This film is not about the Black
September terrorist action that shattered the stillness of the Munich Olympic
village, but about Israel's response to that act. Spielberg sets the stage by
opening with a mixture of dramatic re-creations and archival news footage. By
the time we meet the main character, Avner (Eric Bana), the die has been cast.
Avner is the leader of a five-man team of covert, ex-Mossad operatives who have
been given unofficial status by the government of Israel so they can track down
and assassinate the 11 Palestinians responsible for planning and executing the
attack. Their lone contact is their handler, Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), who
provides them with information about how they can obtain money to fund their
operation. Avner accepts the job despite having a seven-month pregnant wife (Ayelet
Zurer) waiting for him in Jerusalem. For Avner, nothing is more important than
patriotism - at least when the ordeal begins.
The group consists of Steve (Daniel Craig), a South African hothead who is eager
- almost too eager - to shed blood; Carl (Ciaran Hinds), an unnaturally cool and
collected "cleaner"; Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), a toymaker-turned-bombmaker;
and Hans (Hanns Zischler), an expert forger. After making contact with an
information collector named Louis (Mathiew Amalrac), Avner begins learning the
locations of his targets. His mission takes him around the globe - from Paris to
Düsseldorf to Beirut to Athens to London to New York City - as his pursuit of
his goal becomes single-minded. Tragic near-misses, an erosion of conscience,
and the realization that the hunters may have become the hunted turn Avner's
assignment into a nightmare. And the most dangerous target - who may be allied
with the CIA - remains elusive.
Munich, which is based on George Jonas' book Vengeance, claims to have been
"inspired" by true events, which places it into the category of fiction. Key
events occurred, but all of the character interaction is made up. Despite the
historical nature of the story, the synergy with today's events is impossible to
miss. Every word that is spoken about terrorism is as relevant today as it was
in the early 1970s.
The best espionage thrillers are gritty, claustrophobic pieces, filled to the
brim with lies, betrayals, and paranoia. Those qualities are evident here. What
begins as an act of patriotic fervor ends in a quagmire of moral ambiguity.
Avner doesn't know what to believe any more, and he has lost the capacity to
differentiate right from wrong, necessary from gratuitous. What's one more
death, even if the person's name isn't on the list? The currency of his world is
information, but its reliability is often determined after it's too late. And
trust is a luxury Avner cannot afford. The deeper one gets into the espionage
game, the more difficult it becomes to differentiate reality from a fabric of
deceit woven by enemies - if those enemies truly exist.
Munich illustrates how Avner's moral compass is knocked askew. In the beginning,
he doesn't question the righteousness of his actions. But when it comes to make
the first kill, he hesitates, and it falls to one of his confederates to fire
the shot. As killing becomes easier, Avner questions its morality before ceasing
to care. It becomes a routine: learn where the next target is, devise a plan,
then execute it. On one occasion - perhaps the most tense and masterful scene in
the film - a little girl answers an explosives-packed phone that is intended as
a lethal trap for her father. On another occasion, Avner ends up within the
blast radius of one of his bombs.
With each assassination, there is a Black September reprisal: a bomb in a bus
station, a shooting spree, etc. There's nothing new about the cycle of
terrorism, but all it means to Avner and his team is that they have opened a
"dialogue" with their opponents. For Prime Minister Golda Meir, the doctrine is
inescapable: "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises
with its own values… Forget peace now. We have to show them we're strong." Does
Israel have the moral high ground? And, if so, for how long? At one point, one
of Avner's team comments, "[We] do what the terrorists do." In the trenches of
this kind of war, are there good guys and bad guys, or has everyone slipped into
the murky gray of the middle ground?
Spielberg asks, but cannot answer, a key question: Is a war against terrorism
winnable? We would like to think the answer is "yes." It would help us sleep
better at night. But Munich points out a sobering truth: for every terrorist
killed, there is another - possibly a worse one - waiting to take his place.
Capturing or killing Osama bin Laden would be a great propaganda victory, but
would it mean anything? In the end, Avner and his team must face this question.
Can the killing end with 11 men when each is replaced before his body has been
interred?
Spielberg takes pains to present both sides of the issue. To proffer the
Palestinian perspective, he provides a rational terrorist who engages in an
intellectual debate with Avner about how the Palestinians have resorted to the
only methods left to them, how they are willing to wait generations to achieve
their aims, and how the concept of "home" - no matter how unappealing the actual
land - is precious beyond all others. Black September, unlike other recognizable
terrorist groups like the IRA, is the only organization without a land to call
its own.
With a performance that never misses a beat, Eric Bana gives us a man who loses
his way, morally and spiritually. When he acts purely for revenge, Avner becomes
what the Mossad intended, but he never envisioned. As Steve, future James Bond
Daniel Craig shows a caged, homicidal fury. Ciaran Hinds (seen most recently as
Julius Caesar in HBO's Rome) depicts Carl as a dignified, repressed man whose
passion is bubbling beneath the surface. Mathieu Kassovitz and Hanns Zischler
round out the primary team of actors with sincere, low-key performances. The
chameleon-like Geoffrey Rush shows up as Avner's handler. Veteran French actors
Michael Lonsdale and Mathiew Amalric play the father-and-son source of much of
Avner's information.
With Munich, Spielberg has emphasized his position as one of the world's most
compelling filmmakers. The film works on numerous levels and, like Saving
Private Ryan, it becomes the rare genre film that escapes its expected
boundaries and is transformed into something new and powerful. This is a
serious, adult motion picture. The ending is not as bleak as it could be, but it
will send audiences away in a reflective mood, pondering not only the events of
the film, but how close Spielberg's fictionalized world of the early '70s is to
our real world in the 2000s.
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