Democracy
don’t rule the world
You’d
better get that in your head
This
world is ruled by violence
But
I guess that’s better left unsaid
~Union Sundown / Bob Dylan
Steven Spielberg is sometimes condescendingly
described as a "family filmmaker," as if family were not one of the
more profound aspects of our experience. His instinct for the family dynamic
has offered intimacy to many a big-budget premise-the struggling single mother
in ET., the couple teetering on
divorce in Close Encounters, Indiana
Jones's Oedipal struggles. In the 1990s there seemed to come a tipping point:
family was no longer a metaphor for the action, it was the action. This became
explicit as Spielberg grew ambitious for larger clans-the African slaves of Amistad, the six million Jews
memorialized in Schindler's List, the
lost generation of American men in Saving
Private Ryan. Depending on whom you talk to, this was either an extension
of his emotional reach or a grandiose exercise in cinematic grandstanding.
I should lay my cards on the table: I think Spielberg
is one of the great popular artists of our time, and I base this upon the
stupidity/pleasure axis I apply to popular artists: how much pleasure they give
versus how stupid one has to become to receive said pleasure. The answer with
Spielberg is usually: "not that stupid." His films bring pleasure
where they most engage. Of course, when reviewing Munich, the cards the critic
lays down are expected to be of another kind. As it happens, the film itself is
neither "pro-Israeli" nor "pro-Palestinian," but this is
precisely why, in the opinion of many American reviewers, it is inherently
aggressive toward Israel, under the logic that anything that isn't pro is, by
definition, anti. There is no way out of that intellectual cul-de-sac, which is
why the script does its best to avoid that road.
Munich is a film about a truly horrific terrorist
attack and the response to that terrorist attack. It is not about moral
equivalence. It is about what people will do for their families, for their
clans, in order to protect and define them. It is about how far we will go in
the service of the people we come from and the narratives we tell ourselves to
justify what we have done. Those who have sympathies with either side will go
away retaining their sympathies: that is the nature of the argument. And it is
exactly this, the nature of the argument-what it does to those who are involved
in it-and not the argument itself that Munich is interested in. Crucially, it
is billed as "historical fiction," which will permit those who cling
to their separate, mutually exclusive and antagonistic set of facts to call the
film a "fantasy." This film has made groups on both sides
uncomfortable because the truths it tells are of a kind that transcend facticity.
Whichever family you belong to, national or personal, these truths are
recognizable and difficult to dismiss.
Munich is an imagined reconstruction of a program of
assassination that Mossad implemented against the organizers and surviving
participants of the 1972 Munich massacre. If you are too young to remember that
massacre, rent the documentary One Day in
September, because Munich wastes no time setting up context. Unusually for
Spielberg, he treats us as historical grown-ups (though not, as we shall see,
geographical ones). At the heart of the movie is Avner, a young Israeli who
loves his families, both small-his pregnant wife, Daphna and large: Israel
itself. He is an inexperienced but dedicated soldier chosen by Mossad agent
Ephraim to head up a ragtag team of four operatives: a brash, South African-horn
getaway driver called Steve a Belgian toy maker turned explosives expert a
German-Jewish document forger and a "cleanup" guy. Together they roam through a series of 1970s
European cities meticulously re-created, although too laboriously symbolized
(in Spielberg's Paris, wherever you are, you can always see the Eiffel Tower),
doing unto their enemies as their enemies have done unto them.
In the process we begin to understand the biblical
imperative "an eye for an eye" as something more deadly than simple
revenge: it is of the body. It permits us the indulgence of thinking with our
blood. And Spielberg understands the blood thinkers in his audience: for every
assassination of an Arab, we return-lest we forget to a grim flashback of that day in
September, when eleven innocent Israeli athletes met their deaths in brutal and
disgusting fashion. Flashbacks repeatedly punctuate the film's (slightly
overlong) running time. We are not allowed to forget. But neither can we ignore
what is happening to Avner as he progresses through his mission. Eric Bana
gives a convincing portrayal of a man traveling far from who he is in order to
defend who he is. His great asset is a subtle face that is not histrionic when
conveying competing emotions. The scene where Avner is offered a double mazel
tov-once for the arrival of his new baby, and once for the death of a target-is
a startling example of this. Through Avner, Spielberg makes a reluctant audience
recognize a natural and dangerous imperative in the blood, a fury we all share.
"I did it for my family" is the most repeated line in this film. Its
echo is silent, yet you can't help hearing it: what would you do for yours? The
perverse nullity of the cycle of violence is made clear. Death is handed out to
those who handed out death and from whose ashes new death dealers will rise.
Children repeatedly wander into the line of fire. Normal human relations are
warped or discarded. When Black September launches a letter-bomb campaign in response
to Avner's assassinations, there is a twisted satisfaction. "Now we're in
dialogue," says one Mossad agent. Forty years later we are familiar with
this kind of dialogue and where it leads.
The technical achievements of the film are many. Most
notable is the photography, which gives a subtle color palette to each city
while lighting the whole like The Third Man, with bleached-out windows and
skies that the actors shy away from, preferring the darker corners of the
frame. The play of shadow and light looks like a church, a synagogue, a mosque.
In the shadows, the cast debates the ethics of their situation and offer as
many answers as there are speakers. If the audience recoils from South African
Steve's assessment, "The only blood that matters to me is Jewish
blood!" it understands Avner when he says, ''I'm not comfortable with
confusion." It is easier to think with the blood. It is easier to be
certain.
But how many of us know what to do with these two
competing, equally true facts we hear exchanged between Ephraim and Avner:
"Israelis will die if these men live.
You know this is true!” says Ephraim.
Avner replies, “There is no peace at the end of this. You know this is true!”
