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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Spielberg's movie bears little resemblance to the piece of mushy leftist agitprop its critics describe. It does not suggest that terrorists and counterterrorists are morally equivalent or that Israel is wrong to defend itself. It is nonsense to say, as Wieseltier does, that there "are two kinds of Israelis in 'Munich': cruel Israelis with remorse and cruel Israelis without remorse." I can't imagine how Wieseltier thinks Israelis ideally should be portrayed, because many of those in Munich are, if anything, slightly unbelievable in their constant self-interrogation and closely guarded humanism.
"Munich" is about the way vengeance and violence -- even necessary, justified violence -- corrupt both their victims and their perpetrators. It's about the struggle to maintain some bedrock morality while engaging in immorality. Spielberg goes out of his way to be generous to Israel -- omitting, as I'll explain in a moment, one of the Caesarea assassins' most high-profile mistakes. But his film, co-written by engagi liberal playwright Tony Kushner, does mourn the way Israel has compromised its values in the fight against terrorism, while leaving open the question of whether the compromises were worth it. "Some people say we can't afford to be civilized," says Golda Meir (played by Lynn Cohen) early in the film, after the murder of the Israeli athletes. "I've always resisted such people. Today I'm hearing with new ears." Meir makes a conscious decision to cross a moral line. "Munich" is about the implications of that choice, and its unintended consequences.
The film weaves this ethical drama into a jet-setting spy thriller. It begins in the titular city, where a team of Palestinian terrorists break into the apartments housing Israel's Olympic delegation, killing one and taking 10 others hostage. The media concentration at the 1972 Olympics was unprecedented, and the drama was broadcast around the world in real time. Spielberg largely lets it unfold as a media event, showing it from the perspective of rapt spectators, including horrified Israelis and proud, ebullient Palestinians. It all culminates in a firefight at a German airfield, seen as an explosion in the background of a TV correspondent's report. The movie includes the cruelly hopeful early reports, broadcast worldwide, that the hostages were freed, which made the truth -- that all were massacred -- even more devastating.
The Munich massacre is but a prelude to the film, which follows a five-man assassination team led by Avner Kauffman (Eric Bana) as they track down and systematically kill a list of Palestinians provided by the Israeli government. The squad is scrupulous about protecting innocents -- more scrupulous than their real-life counterparts who, in a notorious 1973 case of mistaken identity, killed an innocent Moroccan immigrant in Norway, an incident left out of "Munich." But some of them are also wracked with doubts and questions about whether their mission is futile, whether it is just, and whether they corrode the righteousness of their own cause by aping their enemies' tactics.
The characters' deep ambivalence about the revenge killings they commit is actually profoundly flattering to Israel. It is impossible to imagine such doubt, and such an ardent desire to adhere to a higher standard than that of one's enemies, among the film's terrorists. Indeed, I would guess that many Palestinians would find the movie unbearably self-congratulatory -- its central concern, after all, is the effect of retaliatory Jewish violence on the Jewish soul, not on the Palestinian flesh.
One of the film's most clarifying moments occurs when two members of the team kill a European hit woman. She has previously killed a member of their squad, and they take time off from their official duties to have their revenge. They find her at home, wearing a robe, and she dies with it open, her naked body sprawled out pornographically. Avner tries to cover her, but a colleague yanks the robe back open. Later, this bit of spite torments him -- "I wish I had let you close up her housecoat," he tells Avner. These scenes encapsulate "Munich's" concerns with the way violence degrades both perpetrators and victims. Spielberg isn't equating the Caesarea agent with the assassin-for-hire he kills, but he is showing the way the former loses a bit of his soul to hatred.
