The Stax Report on Munich

Publié le 25 octobre 2006 par david castel

Reflections on Spielberg's latest.

January 13, 2006 - Stax here with my thoughts on Steven Spielberg's film Munich. Please be advised that this column will deal with SPOILERS. I'll not bother recounting the plot of the picture; I will have to assume you either already know it or have seen the movie by now. I found Munich to be a good but not great picture, one that failed to attain greatness primarily because it didn't make us care enough about its team of protagonists. I should not walk out of a film about such important and timely events feeling indifferent but I (and those I saw it with) did.

On an an intellectual level, Munich is a rich and thought-provoking tragic drama. But films are engineered more for an emotional rather than an intellectual response. There are precious few filmmakers who have been better at provoking emotional reactions than Spielberg. I admit this sounds like a backhanded compliment but Spielberg is a wizard at making viewers care for characters who, upon closer analysis, are often paper-thin archetypes. How much did we really know about Chief Brody? Or Alan Grant? Or even Indiana Jones? Not much at all. But thanks to apt casting and carefully crafted set-pieces that made viewers feel scared or excited or made us laugh, we grew to care about these characters.

Munich is also built around set-pieces and populated by characters we don't know much about but Spielberg has restrained himself too much here. He doesn't make us feel as much for these characters as he could have and keeps us largely in the dark about who they are. We know a few sketchy details about Avner's life. We know next to nothing about everyone else. (Quick, what was Avner's wife's name? See, I knew you didn't know it.) What did Daniel Craig's character "Steve" have to do besides evoke Steve McQueen? (Steve is the rugged, blond-haired, blue-eyed guy in the black turtleneck who drives the car -- he's McQueen in Bullitt.) You care a little bit about the bombmaker (who looks like Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws) and Carl but how much did you feel when they died? Or for Hans when they found him on the bench? The assassination of the treacherous Dutch woman had more impact on the viewer than the murders of the protagonists.

Spielberg could have made us care as much about the team as he did that little girl who came back to the apartment or the naked woman who was blinded or even the two shady information brokers. But Munich demands that we judge the main protagonists rather than empathize with them. By doing that the filmmakers expose them for what they are: mere vessels for Spielberg and his writers to make a thematic or political point (one that was just as clear at the two-hour mark as it was at the nearly three-hour mark).

Avner seemed like a good man but it's tough to accept that he's losing his righteousness when we never see what made him so righteous to begin with. Because he's married and is expecting a baby? He was a soldier and a former bodyguard for Golda Meir. This is a man who has been trained to take a life if need be without hesitation because he will be saving another's. In the end, I didn't really buy that Avner was guilt-ridden about killing people who may not have been involved with the Munich massacre. It seemed more like he was afraid of blowback. That isn't guilt; that's self-preservation and it's not as noble. It undermines the film's whole notion of righteousness lost.

While I admire Spielberg's courage in tackling the subject, I wish he had gone all-out. If he's going to employ the "bunch of guys on a mission" narrative then it demands that you either make The Dirty Dozen or that you make The Wild Bunch. The former is a Hollywood production where, although they're anti-heroes, the protagonists are crowd-pleasers out to kick the asses of guys who are far worse. The Wild Bunch is about men of violence who live by the gun and die by the gun. Spielberg could've made a better film had he chosen one of those approaches instead of trying to split the difference. I know those are "popcorn flicks" but Spielberg's sensibilities are those of a popcorn filmmaker and Munich isn't nearly the arthouse film it's being made out to be.

I don't want to leave you with the impression that I hated this film. Far from it. I am simply disappointed in it and in Spielberg for not going further. This is material that demanded people walk out feeling something, whether it is outrage, sadness or perhaps an interest in viewing the politics of vengeance in a new light. That myself and others left Munich feeling largely unmoved is unacceptable and frustrating. – STAX

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Munich

Review: The most mature and unsentimental movie Steven Spielberg has ever made.

by Todd Gilchrist

December 22, 2005 - Notwithstanding the current controversy over the film's depiction of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, Munich is by far the most mature and unsentimental movie Steven Spielberg has ever made. Hewing far closer to political potboilers like Bertolucci's The Conformist than the director's own portrayals of historical events, Spielberg crafts a daringly ambiguous and dramatically credible rendition of events that took place following the murder of eight athletes in Munich during the 1972 Olympic games. Meanwhile, he examines the increasingly volatile political climate not only in Israel but all around the world, albeit in a decidedly more visible context - which may account for the fact that Munich proves to be one of the most controversial, and ultimately, best films of 2005.

Eric Bana, continuing his ascension among the ranks of Hollywood's most talented and versatile actors, plays Avner, an intelligence officer in the Israeli army recruited to assassinate the Palestinians responsible for the deaths of the athletes in Munich. Assigned to his job by Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), who disavows all knowledge of him save for a necessary paper trail of receipts, Avner puts together a five-man team: Steve (Daniel Craig), an African-born getaway driver eager to mete out retribution; Robert (Matthieu Kassovitz), a toymaker enlisted to build bombs; Hans (Hanns Zischler), a German Jew adept at forging documents; and Carl (Ciaran Hinds), whose self-professed job is "to worry."

Together, the men begin a quiet campaign of violence against their Palestinian targets, aided by mercenary informants Louis (Matthieu Amalric) and his "Papa" (Michael Lonsdale), who provide names and locations. But rather than restoring the balance of power between Israel and Palestine, or taking justifiable retribution against the murderers, the violence begets more attacks from the Palestinians, and begins to take its toll on the quintet once they attempt to return to "normal" life. Before long, Avner and his colleagues find themselves not only questioning what they have done, but why; are their efforts the measured response of an enlightened culture that makes necessary compromises in the name of preserving peace, or are they retribution killings that merely exacerbate a cycle of violence between their people and the Palestinians?

DreamWorks

Spielberg's mastery as a showman and purveyor of spectacle is the stuff of Hollywood boilerplate, which is why the sophistication and intelligence of Munich is all the more impressive. Where even his previous forays into starkly dramatic material - including Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan - occasionally veered into shameless sentiment, here he approaches his subject with deadly-serious gravitas, never proffering some position of moral justification to elevate the Israeli foot soldiers above their victims, nor reducing them to bloodthirsty murderers out for vengeance.

As the closest a modern movie has gotten to resembling the emotional complexity and political fierceness of the aforementioned Conformist - an admitted favorite of this critic - Munich does not capture the action in balletic displays of visual poetry which might transform the film into just another bravura piece of entertainment (a la this summer's War of the Worlds). Rather, the murders are filmed with a crude and unflinching eye both for visual detail and storytelling fealty - these men aren't stealthy movie assassins but, soldiers thrust into responsibilities which their training has not prepared them for, on either a technical or emotional level.

In portraying their failures as well as their successes, Spielberg renders them utterly human, but never reduces them to mere vessels for the audience's blind sympathy; and best of all, Spielberg abandons the final-scene feel-good ending of films past for an ambivalent, devastating finale that works because it suggests no clear or more importantly correct choice of action, either for these men or Israel (or any other slighted country) as a whole.

DreamWorks

After making a promising stateside debut in Hulk and then suffering through a thanklessly credible role opposite Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom in the melodramatic Troy, Eric Bana proves with his performance here why Hollywood should be scrambling to give him permanent residency; like fellow Aussie Russell Crowe, his commitment to character is absolute, his authority on screen understated and his ultimate presence undeniable. As the film's anchor, he conveys roiling emotion, moral ambivalence and intellectual acuity in but a single glance; needless to say if he fails to be recognized for his performance he will enjoy many other opportunities to do so in the future.

Ultimately, the problem some audiences will have with Munich is the film's greatest virtue - namely, that it rejects the facile notion that there are moral absolutes in this age-old conflict, and refuses to assign subjective declarations of good or evil to either the main characters or their adversaries. In a time when these distinctions are all too easily drawn by lawmakers, critics and pundits, Spielberg dares to not only suggest but fully explore the moral ambiguity of these compromises - the line between a "measured response" and abject revenge, between necessary intrusion and complete infringement of civil liberties - that continue to rage in our collective consciousness.

So while detractors cluck their objections and deign Spielberg "no friend of Israel," the film remains a benchmark achievement in the filmmaker's distinguished career, and one which should earn him a few more friends amongst the critical community, moviegoing audiences and, God forbid, Academy voters. Because the only thing that could possibly be evil about Munich itself is that some people might not run right out and see it; as the centerpiece of a recent renaissance of politically-mined films (which includes Constant Gardener, Good Night, and Good Luck and Syriana amongst others), Munich restores modern moviemaking to the tenets held by filmmakers who flourished during its glory days in the 1970s - as a tool not only for entertainment, but education and enlightenment as well.

Rating Info

4.5 out of 5 Stars | 9/10

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