Munich: what works and doesn’t
The most shocking thing about Steven Spielberg’s film, Munich, had nothing to do with its politics.
In some ways, the biggest flaw of the film is its inability to come to a decision, leaving viewers little wiser than when we went in. Despite claims by some critics that this film slams Israel, in truth, it does not take a side, pretty much giving both sides of the conflict – though weighed heavily in Israel’s favor
But the beauty of the film and its ability to recreate that Cold War spy thriller sensibility more than makes up for its lacking in philosophy. No, the biggest surprise for me was the almost completely linear development – or in other words, the biggest surprise was the lack of surprises to any one remotely familiar with the original background material.
This is a shock because of the expectations that Tony Kushner was to pen the script for this film, promising that magically internal surrealism that he has demonstrated in other work.
For all the passion the film endeavored to create, we get no symbolic internal conflict, no metaphoric representations, no distorted reality at all – merely a straight narrative from beginning to end that works as a most conventional thriller. I had expected much more from Kushner.
The script’s meager attempt at surrealism largely fails in an attempt to draw emotions out of the audience by dragging us back to the Munich Massacre in the final scenes that would have worked better – if with less excitement – without the dramatic imposition.
Flashbacks are troublesome devices because in realistic works such as Munich they tend to break up the steady flow of the narrative and tend to lend an air of artificiality to an otherwise very well-drawn out tale.
The film is seeking to remind the audience of the tragedy that justified the assassination team, but because the film really hasn’t made up its mind about who is right or wrong, the final slaughter seems confused.
The film would have been served better telling the whole tale at the beginning then flashing back to those scenes not as an introduction to what happened to the athletes but as a reminder – a kind of Greek chorus kind of effect, reminding us of what we had already seen.
Better yet, the movie would have worked much better as a framed flashback, in which we meet the leader of the assassination squad at a point where he was racked with guilt and paranoia, and the flashback would encompass bulk of the movie in explaining why he was paranoid. This would have strengthened his paranoia in the audience’s mind much better than the gradual evolving paranoia that slowed down the film near the end – to which the existing flashback was only marginal relief.
Creeping cars along the street without explanation at the beginning, his terrified call to Europe, and his rush into the Israeli Embassy would have been much more powerful if presented at the beginning leaving us with the question as to whether he is a madman or not.
As for the Munich scenes, they also lost punch because they were broken up. This is the curse of occasional flash back. Had we seen the entire slaughter in one piece, we could have put together more of the emotional impact of the events that justified Israel’s move to go after Black Septembers and those that helped plan the attack.
That lack of initial motivation weakens the film and confuses the moral outrage. We needed to see the German incompetence, the false report of the Athletes being saved, the outrageous behavior by Arab countries in refusing to recognize the tragedy, and above all the beginning to end murders and the aftermath in the order in which they happened, lending weight to the terrible choices Israel had to make. By dividing this through the movie, we lose the emotion dynamite that set off the Israeli retaliation.
We needed that scene up front after which perhaps many of the arguments we later confront – such as the remarkable scenes in the safe house and the later confrontation in the street -- would become even more emotionally charged.
The film could have worked as a series of flashbacks, but that would have required a more chaotic approach entirely, something more akin to 12 Monkeys than Graham Greene’s Third Man – which this film reminds me of.
The other problematic area – which a framed tale might have helped solve – has to do with the main character’s altered state.
While the script stays loyal to the original material, the character’s shifts are uncomfortable near the end. We see him growing harder and more murderous in the film’s last third, someone who wants to continue killing – and yet we get someone who rebels against his handlers a short time later. This comes as a result of several of his fellow assassins being killed, but the film lacks a scene that makes his personal conversion obvious.
All this said, Munich is an amazing film, one that overcomes its flaws with sheer magnificence, giving us a taste of the underworld of spies that James Bond flicks haven’t done since From Russia With Love, and bringing to the screen images of Europe that are magically Spielberg, full of arches and reflected glass, framed characters, and remarkable moods that captivate you and make you want to see the film again and again.
While I’m not expert on what should win or not with an Oscar, the performance in this film lived up to expectations, and in some cases surpassed them, creating characters that do not act like super spies, but rather ordinary human beings forced to do things that are in other circumstances outrageous.
But for me, many of the scenes, exchanges between characters and transitions from scene to seen are pure visual nuggets, a treat that – while having the usual Spielberg touch – go beyond almost anything he has done before, creating a gritty street-feel that I hope he uses again (so I can steal them from him).
While I had hoped for much more symbolic internal conflicts as part of this film – ala prior Kushner work – what we get is well worth the price of admission and worth close study in film style and acting ability.
If up to me, I’d give it an Oscar.