Munich

Of course, the holiest book of all for Jews is the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament that lay out the basics of the faith - its history, rituals, practice and so forth. Second on the list is a book called the Talmud, which includes centuries of rabbinical scholarship and commentary relating to The Torah. Great Jewish thinkers consider the questions and issues raised by their Bible, and they write about what they have learned, and eventually, if it's deemed important enough by their peers and descendants, it actually becomes Scripture.

Now, I'm not one to be overly impressed by organized religion, but this is a pretty fantastic system. It allows for opinions to change over time, for future generations to live by the Bible not as slaves or puppets, but thoughtfully. It indicates a more general quest for knowledge, rather than authority or control.

Jews sometimes forget that this is what the religion is all about; taking stock, learning, reading, searching within ones' self. They get all caught up in the "rules," like which plates you're supposed to use at which meals. Or they get caught up in the politics, confusing blind, jingoistic devotion to the State of Israel with moral clarity and purity of mind. Steven Spielberg's latest film, Munich, is a not-so-gentle reminder of this reality, that part of being not just a good Jew but a good human being is learning from your mistakes and always leaving yourself open to new experience and new perspectives.

Munich is Spielberg's second film of 2005 dealing with a clash of civilizations. The first was this summer's more effects-heavy but equally contemplative War of the Worlds, a sometimes-successful depiction of a realistic battle between alien beings and humankind. As Morgan Freeman announced in that film's opening narration, it showed a war fought between the simple, unaware humans of this world and an intelligent alien civilization both cold and indifferent to the fate of its enemies.

This second film depicts a war between two groups - Israelis and Palestinians - who are equally human, and driven by emotion rather than sagacity or technology or indifference. It is a war film in which war is unwinnable, a revenge film in which the vengeance sought by the heroes is grisly and horrific and unsatisfying and incomplete and a "guys on a mission" movie without a clear mission. It is the most direct challenge to the forces in America and abroad that would see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as black and white. It is also Steven Spielberg's most provocative, most insightful and bravest film in decades. Maybe ever. This is a movie every American over 15 should see.



Many have referred to Spielberg's masterpiece as a Prayer for Peace. Often, in reviews, I see Gandhi's famous quote that "an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind." These ideas are absolutely contained within the film. Spielberg clearly has a prejudice against revenge that borders on revulsion. Violent acts, even violent acts that can be rationalized, eat away at those who commit them from the inside. Palestinian and Israeli, all agree that when they carry out grim acts of terror, no matter how justified by rage or betrayal, they become monsters.

As I said, these ideas are all contained in Munich, but they don't define the film. More than a prayer for peace, Munich is a plea for intelligence, rationality and consideration. Spielberg comments on the duty of everyone to make up their own mind and not to accept extreme ideologies peddled by governments or politicians or religious leaders.

The film opens in 1972, in the Olympic Village of Munich, Germany. A group of Palestinian gunmen, belonging to a terrorist group calling itself Black September, have taken hostage 11 Jewish athletes competing for Israel. A trip to the airport with the hostages goes horribly awry. Most of the terrorists are killed by the German army, but all 11 Jewish hostages perish in the rescue attempt.

In a brilliant, whirlwind opening 15 minutes, Spielberg gives us a general idea of the horrors of that day in September, as well as the numbed pain of Jews all around the world as they watch their countrymen suffer and die on television. Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) expresses a familiar mixture of self-pity, gritty determination and gallows humor in a meeting with high-ranking Israeli generals: "While the rest of the world plays games, with torches and brass bands, 11 Jews die in Germany. And no one cares."

Meir and her generals have decided to have 11 Palestinians, the architects behind Black September, assassinated. They turn not to professional killers, who would be known to the international intelligence community, but instead recruit an oddball team of experts in various fields. There's a British hardliner who professes to care only about "Jewish blood" and nothing else (future Bond Daniel Craig), a Belgian toymaker who's also an explosives expert (French actor and director Mattheiu Kassovitz), an excitable German Jew (Hanns Zischler) and a mysterious figure who works as a cleaner, ensuring that Israel can't be connected with the killings (Ciaran Hinds).

Leading the team is Mossad soldier and Meir's former bodyguard Avner Kaufman (Eric Bana), who shows no reluctance to the near-impossible task of tracking down and killing 11 terrorists, despite having a young wife and a baby on the way. Though all the members of his team will face the harsh reality of their assignment during the film, it is Avner who will make the largest transformation. He starts as a willing but reluctant soldier, morphs into a cold-blooded, unremorseful killing machine, and ends up a man haunted and shattered by his experiences. Much of the film's success relies on Bana's ability to communicate these changes, and he's more than up to the challenge. This is some of the strongest work I've seen from any actor this year.

After their government handler (Geoffrey Rush in a brilliant supporting performance) explains the usual espoinage film deal - that the government has no knowledge of their existence, that they will live off money left in a secret Swiss bank account and so on - the film contents itself to chronicle the mission with a minimum of sentiment or flamboyance. This is Spielberg's most restrained work ever.

Generally, he tends to overplay his hand, to make the emotional arcs of the films larger than they need to be to express his ideas. How much more potent would Oskar Schindler's sacrifices had seemed if we didn't see him break down over his failure to save one more Jew from the gas chamber? How much more resonance could Captain Miller's death in Saving Private Ryan have had if it had ended the film, rather than that ridiculous morph-effect and bookend? How much more insightful would Minority Report have felt if Steve didn't cheat and give us a happy ending?

In Munich, he totally side-steps this urge. The movie is not grim, but it is somber and sober and aware of its real-world, modern implications. Spielberg doesn't give us an easy way out, and never considers tying up all the film's emotions for the sake of closure. Instead, he dares us to consider the depressing reality of a futile political struggle that continues to this day. He hasn't made a film about brave Jews who won't let anyone fuck with them, although that may be what some of his characters profess. And he hasn't made some ridiculous depiction of noble, heroic Palestinians fighting bravely for what they think is right. He's made a film about how both Israel and Palestine are filled with intelligent, driven people locked in a never-ending struggle from which they can't escape.

And it's clear they all want to. But to give up anything to the other side, or particularly to recognize the righteousness of another's cause, is to admit weakness. Worse yet, it means to sacrifice a dream for which your ancestors gave their lives. For proud cultures with a strong sense of history like the Palestinians or the Jews, this is simply too much to ask.

In one of the film's most perceptive and heart-breaking sequences, the Israeli assassins find themselves sharing a safehouse with a group of young Palestinian revolutionaries. (The Israelis lie and say they are German Communists). Avner and a Palestinian named Ali (Omar Metwally) share a cigarette and discuss the situation in the Middle East. Both make salient points. Avner asks Ali how he imagines terrorists will win back a country (Palestine) that never existed in the first place. Ali argues that, in time, anything is possible, that the Jews fought for centuries before they had a country of their own. Avner asks if the "chalky soil and dirt huts" of Palestine are worth losing generations of young men to violence. Ali points out that this land is his family's home, and that no one who has no home of their own could understand his pain. Back and forth. Back and forth.

A customer today called Munich repetitive, and of course some element of repetition is inevitable given the nature of the film's events. But this is still a shallow critique. It's not as repetitive as it is cyclical. Everything the Israelis do to others is visited back upon them. All violence committed by Palestinians is returned to their own people ten-fold. As Avner as his team begin cutting down Palestinian leaders (in sequences of remarkable swiftness and intensity), assassins begin targeting them for extermination. The French agent (Mathieu Amalric) who sells them information may also be selling information to the enemy. By the time Avner has killed 6 terrorists, he has become so paranoid about being a target that he sleeps on the floor of the closet with a gun by his head.

The idea, clearly, is that this sort of organized vengeance doesn't work, no matter how much we wish it would. Spielberg seems to insist that we need new thinking, that counter-intuitive though it may be, killing the men responsible for violence only creates an overall increase in violent men. Avner notes to his handler that all the Black September leaders they take out are immediately replaced, usually by more extreme agitators. It's just extremely sadistic arithmatic. Even if many are scared out of terrorism because of the threat of assassination, this same threat fills some with an awful determination. And those will be the next generation of fearmongers and terrorists, who will learn from their enemies' actions.

Again, I have to come back to the amazing Bana performance. So often in film, particularly American film, we're presented with the archetypal "reluctant hero." This is the character Jean-Claude Van Damme always plays - the killer who doesn't want to kill, who wishes he could change his essential nature even though he can't. It's usually not very believable - the characters make much more sense kicking ass than they do feeling bad about having just kicked ass. Bana's Avner is an excellent leader and certainly lethal when he means to me, but he never strikes us as particularly adept at killing. Rather than the cool assassins of Hollywood imagination, the Mr. and Mrs. Smith's who gleefully pump bodies full of lead just for the shit of it, Bana's performance shows the full psychological and physical toll of killing. This is guilt as cancer, eating away at the body and mind.

Other performances of note include Rush as the Israeli official who has convinced himself over years of service as to the impeachable rightness of his cause, Kassovitz as the enthusiastic and child-like toymaker Robert and Hinds as Carl, one of the coolest, most well-spoken and vividly-realized characters in any film this year.

Spielberg's direction is, really, near-flawless. I can't think of a scene he plays wrong. When the movie requires thrills and intensity, here's right there bringing it. A scene in which the assassins try to blow up a PLO diplomat and Black September leader without killing his daughter who's in the same apartment is as exciting and tense as anything in an Indiana Jones movie. But everyone knows the guy can direct a kickass set piece. What's more amazing, and singular about Munich among his recent work, is how poignant and realistic he gets the human interaction (aided, naturally, by a wonderful screenplay by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth that's both complex and emotionally direct). The interplay between the team members is funny and well-observed, the exposition (of which there's a lot) really flows, the often-complicated political maneuvers are always clearly explained and even the scenes between Bana's Avner and his wife Daphna (Ayelet Zorer) really ring true.

Munich is by no means a happy film, nor one that is easy to watch. But it lacks the suffocating self-importance of some of Steve's other "serious" work. Gone is Saving Private Ryan's hokey traditionalism and award-chasing. Gone is Amistad's sweeping score and preening monologues. Gone, even, is the gloss and taste of Schindler's List. Spielberg has stripped away many of his well-tested techniques and fall-back cinematic tricks, and really opened up his tone and style with this new entry.

Janusz Kaminski's film is bold and bright, and wonderfully captures a variety of European and Asian cities. His compositions, such as an information exchange at an open-air market in front of the Eiffel Tower, really drive home the notion of a conflict between East and West. His use of various filters, and particularly his attention to color saturation, really enhances the film's sense of 70's style.

I think, ultimately, the period is an important factor in considering Munich. Spielberg constantly reminds us that this film occurs in the past - 30+ years in the past - and that these exact same debates currently rage on all around us. Is it right for America to do whatever it takes to defeat "terror"? Can terror ever be defeated, or simply by challenging terrorists to a fight, do we validate their cause? Is it worth killing to protect our people if it costs us our pride, sense of right and wrong and our souls? Does being a strong leader mean staying the course even when everything goes wrong, or does being a strong leader mean having the sense to change your mind when new situations arise?

If it becomes clear that organized murder doesn't improve security or diplomacy, can it ever be morally justified? Does moral justification even matter when you're at war? And what if that war never ends?