THE INDISPENSIBLES – #25: MUNICH
The thing that needs to be addressed about Munich, straight up front and centre, is that you can debate about where it stands politically, you can argue, until the cow’s come home, to such arcane effect about just how much is true in relation to the notion of the “based on a true story” tag, or you can simply address the film as what it is and what it does and leave it at that!
If people had been able to do just that, then Munich would have cleaned up at the Oscars, it would have topped every single critic’s end of year “best of” list and it would most deservedly be spoken of in the same breath as Saving Private Ryan and Minority Report when discussing the best films Steven Spielberg has given us in the last ten years or so.
Not only is Munich a masterpiece when you judge it as a film and not a political statement, but as a ‘film by Steven Spielberg’ it is a real ‘must see’ because, whilst ‘The Beard’ has tackled dark subject matter before (cough… Schindler’s List… cough), this is coldly brutal stuff done in a way you genuinely thought him incapable.
From a “political” point of view, the film has never truly been judged as the flawless (okay the sex scene in the finale is a little over-wrought!) modern classic it is because too many people are getting hung up on whether it is an attack on the Palestinians one minute or whether Mr Spielberg is ”no friend of Israel” the next. Understand this, Spielberg’s Munich is favouring neither Palestine nor Israel and, by not taking sides, he has freed himself to make a sublime piece of cinema.
Munich tells a some-what fictionalised account of the Israeli government’s secret retaliation to the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes by Black September gunmen in Munich on 1972. It details how a squad of assassins, led by former Mossad agent Avner (Eric Bana) track down and kill a list of Black September members thought to be responsible for the eleven Israeli athletes’ murders.
The first part of the film, which depicts the hostage taking and the subsequent slaughter, plays like a docu-drama and is wholly accurate to the historical accounts we know of when it comes to this tragedy. The bases have already been covered on this topic with Kevin MacDonald’s One Day In September (a fabulous documentary feature that should be watched in companionship with this film). The second part of the movie, which depicts the Israeli government’s response, is where the heated debate by film critics, historians and newspaper columnists comes into play.
Spielberg refers to the film’s second part as “historical fiction”, saying it is inspired by the actual Israeli operations which are now known as Operation Wrath of God. So in effect, whilst the tone is seeped in tragedy, revenge and real-life politics, Munich is effectively an epic, emotional ‘men-on-a-mission’ movie that just happens to oh so beautifully capture the absolute inescapable futility of revenge. And it’s done so pitch-perfectedly too:
The assigned men, Avner (Eric Bana) Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), Carl (Ciaran Hinds), Steve (Daniel Craig)and Hans (Hanns Zischler), are given a list of names that are “most definitely” the people responsible for the Munich massacre and must be killed, but over time and for each name erased, another name appears with the label that they too are “responsible” and we, at the exact moment as the characters, come to realise that this will never end. It will never stop. These men will simply go round and round, killing and killing, and each name removed will be replaced by another.
And it is with this note that Spielberg is effectively and masterfully ‘using’ his film to argue revenge breeds revenge, which breeds revenge and… the continuing ‘Catch-22′ style looping of reprisal upon reprisal is what has happened in the likes of Iraq and the Middle East, what used to be Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, Northern Ireland and Africa. But we never learn!
Take the film on its own terms though. I urge you. There you find an epic, expansive globe-trotting ‘men-on-a-mission’ thriller with brilliant performances (I was never a fan of Daniel Craig but his work here completely changed that!) and expertly handed set-pieces. Assassinations are planned, plotted and carried out. Each one is more thrilling and nerve-twisting then the last. In one sequence there is a moment of Hitchcockian style tension when the team plant a bomb to be activated when their target answers the phone, they wait for his little girl to leave for school before calling her father’s telephone; they have failed to see her re-enter the house so watch their faces crumble and our bums shuffle to the edge of our seats when she answers the phone and an immediate abort is attempted.
Munich does not exist within the archtype of the “typical” Hollywood thriller. It does not design its assassination tinged set-pieces to be bigger then the last so we build towards the ‘required’ climax. Spielberg measures them out in a way that the more bombastic a sequence, the less emotional impact it could well carry. Bombs do go off. Shots are fired. Getaway cars are used. But you tell me whether there’s any other scene that chills and quietly takes effect the way it does when Bana and Craig’s characters use a bicycle pump as a ‘gun’ to avenge one of their team-mate’s murder, on a barge quietly moored outside of town.
Munich is very much a ‘thinking’ man’s thriller. It’s politics seemed to confuse people from being able to address the film as it what it is and what it should justifiably be regarded as. It was the best film of 2005 and it most definitely is well worth regarding as one of the five best films Steven Spielberg has ever made.
7 Responses to “THE INDISPENSIBLES – #25: MUNICH”
I liked Munich, but I didn’t love it. I don’t know why. It just never engaged me, seemed overwrought in places. Saying that I would’verather it win the best picture Oscar over Crash, but still would’ve been disappointed that either Capote, Brokeback Mountain or Good Night and Good Luck didn’t win. It was just a good solid film for me, but not the best of the year.
Saying that though, that’s a really well written article, and I haven’t seen Munich since it came out in the cinema, I may have to check it out again, so in that respect, I guess mission accomplished on your part!
Thanks mate, you’ve ‘got’ the point of this straight off the bat… I want to start some discussions about films that I ADORE and to get people to re-evaluate the choices I put out or to seek them out if they’ve never seen them before.
Now I like CRASH a great deal. For what it is, I think it’s near-perfect save for the incredibly over-wrought hammering home of its central message! Now, being near-perfect for what it is, does not mean it is worthy of or should have won Best Picture.
Then again, neither should BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. Now, don’t get me wrong, that was a truly great film and if I had to choose between CRASH and that movie for Best Picture then it should have been this.
But MUNICH and GOODNIGHT GOOD LUCK? Those were not just the best movies of that year but they’re movies that will stand the test of time a hell of a lot better then CRASH will.
MUNICH definitely needs revisited. Take a look at that scene where Bana’s Avner gets caught up in the bomb blast. Look at the technical mastery on show, mixing image, sound, no sound, delayed image.
BRILLIANT!
I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t seen this film yet. iw anted to when it was first released, and then it just slipped off my radar. I think my father has it on DVD, so I’ll try and watch it this weekend when I go home.
Kristina, you MUST!!
Most definitely worthy of standing alongside JAWS, RAIDERS, SCHINDER’S LIST, ET and JURASSIC PARK!
Ah I knew there was a movie that wasn’t even nominated for best picture that year that was one of my movies of the year too. The Squid and the Whale, loved that movie. I’ll definitiely check out Munich again though, I remember thinking it was technically brilliant, but didn’t get caught up in it as much as I thought I would. If I see it cheap somewhere I’ll pick it up.
Aaaaah, SQUID & THE WHALE… genius movie!
Our tastes really are alligned!
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