I'll be writing up a Top Ten Movies of 2005 list any day now. I don't want to kill the suspense, but let me just say that Munich will find its way on to the list, without a doubt. It's a brilliant film. I happen to agree 100% with Spielberg's point of view on this issue (more on this later), which apparently puts me in the minority in terms of worldwide Jewry. I can accept this...I'm also in the minority, worldwide Jewry-wise, when it comes to wearing silly hats and enjoying gefilte fish.
What I don't understand is the hostility Spielberg has been facing for expressing his particular viewpoint. Jews are talking about this issue right now, both in their daily lives, in newspapers and magazines, and on the Internet. And much of what they're saying is kind of creepy and foreign to me. I've never been a big fan of Judaism as a religion, but I have long been a fan of the Jewish people themselves. I respect their inquisitiveness and focus on education and intelligence, their pluck and ability to survive amidst all manner of racism, xenophobia and hardship and, of course, their endless good humor and ability to laugh at themselves.
So I don't understand how, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jews seem incapable of looking beyond their own, narrow viewpoint. The way I see it, we have tried to play the aggressive bully since Israel's inception, and even more so since 1968 - meeting all violence with violence, keeping Palestinians as disenfranchised second-class citizens roped off in slums - and this technique isn't working. In fact, it's only makign the situation more and more dire. Why is it so wrong to simply point out the need for a change in approach?
This post has been inspired by a rather reprehensible (to my mind, anyway) article from the Jerusalem Post by a reporter named Uri Dan. Dan attended Munich with some native New Yorkers, and enjoyed some delicious Chinese food apparently, and has written an article about the experience.
His thesis is as follows: Even though the sniveling Arab-loving traitor Spielberg wanted to make a film praising Palestinians and criticizing his own people, as it turns out, his movie will help Israel's ongoing campaign of violence and retribution anyway! So there!
It's just such angry, hostile stuff. Spielberg's film expresses many emotions, and anger is in there. But he reserves his anger mainly for those Palestinian terrorists who initially murdered the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. There is, yes, some questioning of the tactics of the Irsaeli government, but I would say this falls more under the "fear" category than "anger." Every single character in the film (yes, including some of the men ultimately responsible for planning Munich) are rendered as sympathetic, nuanced human characters. Anger is not the film's primary or even secondary emotion - it's about the chaos, guilt and existential dread that arise once all your anger has been spent up. Mr. Dan certainly doesn't need to agree with Spielberg's viewpoint, but why does expressing this view make The Beard a target for ridicule?
The Mossad could not have made a better film to recruit volunteer agents than Steven Spielberg's most recent film, Munich.
...
At a dinner in an excellent Chinese restaurant on Third Avenue, Shanghai Pavilion, seated at a round table, Spielberg's film was the topic of conversation, after many of the diners had already hurried to see it.
The tall and beautiful Amanda, who sat at my right, and her younger sister, the no less lovely Hilary, who sat at my left, who are not Jewish, took a completely different view: "You Israelis are not willing to let anyone play with your mind," said Amanda. "If there are Arabs that are murdering you, you get up and kill them. I admire your Mossad and I wish I could join it," continued Amanda, who is involved in fashion planning at a well-known fashion firm in Manhattan. She revealed to me that she prefers to read any novel based on the adventures of Mossad agents. Hilary eagerly concurred.
Personally, I don't know if Amanda really understood the movie, or was worth quoting in an article analyzing the film. If, that is, she even exists. What she describes covers, maybe, the film's first half hour. Once the Mossad agents begin their violent march across Europe, things start going horribly awry. It's not this easy "when someone kills you, you kill them...done!" That's kind of the entire point of the film.
Here's where the article gets kind of gross.
PERHAPS SPIELBERG'S conscience troubled him because the script represents the conceptual-emotional perversion so characteristic of Jewish filmmakers in Hollywood - they love to represent the Palestinians as being oppressed and bullied by the Jews. Perhaps that is what caused Spielberg to launch an early public-relations campaign in which his spokespeople placed an emphasis on the fact that the film would trigger a controversy because Munich tries to explain and perhaps justify the motives of the Palestinian murderers. And perhaps the entire dispute surrounding the film that began in the media months before the film was first screened this week was no more than spin, a PR ploy to attract worldwide attention.
Okay, perversion? Fuck this guy. Spielberg's film is in no way "perverse." I hate hate hate hate this "self-loathing Jew" thing, okay? Just because someone has a viewpoint that's outside of the mainstream of Jewish thought on a subject doesn't mean he hates himself, it doesn't mean he's a traitor, and it certainly doesn't mean he's a pervert. He just has an opinion. Discussion, debate and differences in philosophy are deeply important to practitioners of the Jewsih faith, remember?
Not to mention that Munich in no way shows Palestinians being "bullied by Jews." In fact, there is a lot of stuff Spielberg could have shown to highlight how modern Palestinians are daily bullied by Jews. But he doesn't deal with this content at all. His film opens with a group of Jews being murdered by Palestinians, then moves to scenes in which armed Jewish mercenaries methodically kill Palestinian terrorists, minimizing collateral damange and feeling intense guilt about their actions. Not to mention...It's all based on a true story!
And that last sentence is just confusing...He starts the paragraph by taking issue with the perspective in Munich, and then concludes by saying that Spielberg's announcement that the film would be controversial was overheated and a PR ploy. But isn't this article about a controvery surrounding Munich, at least, as far as Uri Dan is concerned?
But it is very possible that the makers of Munich did not take into account that the general mood and prevailing consensus in the United States and other democracies, since 9/11, is that terror should be fought everywhere it can be found. Or as Amanda put it, "Those bastards need to be killed and the Mossad does it very well."
First of all, to this idiotic twit Amanda, STFU GTFO OMFG SMD LMB1111111
Now, as for Uri, I hate to break it to you, man, but the majority of Americans now oppose the War in Iraq, part of their reconsideration of the entire War on Terror. Because they're starting to sense that the President has no plan, nor any idea what he is doing, nor a mind capable of holding more than 2 individual thoughts at the same time. You and Amanda represent a group of arrogant war fans who will see their numbers inevitably dwindle more and more in the coming months and years, as bodies continue to pile up but actual real-world progress continues to elude our us.
And that's in America, War on Terror Superfan #99. Other democracies, such as those of Europe, or Canada, were certainly no fan of the slash-and-burn shock-and-awe fight-'em-there-so-we-don't-fight-'em-here mentality.
I myself refrained from waiting in the long lines at the theaters that formed in the wake of the early advertising campaign for Munich and the many articles by critics. The reason I am in no rush to see it is that as a journalist I followed the tragedy of the Munich Olympics up close and in real time, as well the determination by the devoted Israelis, the decision makers, to eliminate the terrorists responsible. It was larger than life, larger than any film that even Spielberg could produce and direct.
This idiot reminds me of this guy we get in the video store, whose name I won't say. He always boasts about his long career in Hollywood that includes practically directing films for which he never got credit, as well as hobnobbing with all kinds of important people. He likes to brag and boast endlessly about his achievements, to anyone listening. When we all start to ignore him, sometimes he makes desperate attempts to impress his own 8-year old child.
Once, we had the Concert for Bangladesh DVD on in the back. He asked what music DVD's had come out recently, and I pointed to the DVD that was playing, and he said:
"What do I need to see the Concert for Bangladesh again for? I was there for the whole thing, back stage!"
He and Uri share this unfortunate trait in common. They can't get over some grand achievement of their past, and resist all efforts to depict this event for a larger audience. I guess they fear it will make their experience less special, or maybe they're just bitter about not being asked to take part. Mystery Customer probably would have loved to be interviewed on the "Bangaldesh" DVD (if he's telling the truth and was really there, which is open for debate). And Uri probably would have embraced Munich if Steve had sat down with him and other Israeli journalists and pretended to care what they think.
I mean, yes, Uri, of course a situation as eventful and tragic and overwhelming as the Munich hostage crisis would be "larger than life," and difficult to recreate in a film exactly as it was when you were there. But does that mean filmmakers should avoid retelling dramatic stories? I mean, the Bible is larger than life, but that hasn't stopped filmmakers since the beginning of the cinema from trying tofilm Bible stories.
Jackass.
That is why it was so interesting to hear the wife of a former American filmmaker, a former Israeli herself, who came to share that meal with three members of her family immediately after seeing the film. "Extraordinary," she stated. "A film made on the highest level and which caused me, as an Israeli, to feel a special sense of pride - that one cannot kill us without Mossad agents eventually coming to avenge our blood. And then too, unlike Arab murderers, we make sure to harm only the murderers and no one else."
Is Uri making these anonymous people who all seem to agree with him up? Are they fictional? Why won't he name them? What's this sort of bogus anecdotal evidence supposed to prove anyway?
So here's another person who clearly missed the entire point of Munich. I'm thinking maybe Uri showed them only the first 45 minutes or so, when it appears that the film will be the story of Mossad agents taking sweet revenge on evil Palestinians. As a Jew, I have to say, one thing I never once felt during Munich was a sense of pride. Hopelessness? Check. Despair? Check. Pride? Not even close.
I think, what we're seeing in articles like these, and in the general Israeli response to Munich, are the long-term effects of living under terrorism. Israelis have lived with terrorists in their cities for so long, they have internalized the notion of living in fear. They have developed entire political philosophies for dealing with the constant threat of random death-by-explosion. Palestinians, too, have now spent more than a generation living as refugees. They are crowded into camps, ostracized by society at large, sometimes arrested without charge or harrassed by soldiers.
Both sides have decided that the offense was originated on the other side - Palestinians bomb buses and buildings as revenge for their mistreatment at the hands of Israel's Army, Jews attack Palestinian camps and kill their leaders as revenge for acts of terror - and that anything else they do is justified. Uri's article doesn't just argue that killing Palestinians is justified. He sees it as something to be celebrated, something that brings glory on to the Jews as a people. It proves they don't take shit from nobody. And how dare this American come in and question them?
And, if this were a schoolyard, and Palestine had just shoved Israel, that would be a sensible policy. Don't just take it...Push them back! But this isn't a schoolyard. It's real life, and it has been going on for decades now, and the pushing isn't working. I'm not saying that I or Steven Spielberg have an actual solution...but why don't we stop pushing for a few minutes and agree that one is needed? Can we even get that far? Consensus that we've lost our way?
The most eloquent counter-argument I've heard thus far to Munich comes from a woman of Israeli descent I spoke with at Laser Blazer. She felt that Spielberg eloquently expressed his disaffection for vengeance killings. But she also felt that his film was rather empty, and a bit shallow. An American Jew living in peaceful, sunny L.A. has the luxury of telling Israelis not to get angry and protect themselves and take revenge on those who try to kill them. He's not there to suffer the consequences of inaction. But what should the Israelis do? Agree to no longer exist? Leave the Middle East? Accept having their citizenry murdered daily by suicide bombers?
I can't really argue against this point. She's right, in that Munich has no solution to the problems facing Israel, and only suggests they should stop doing what they're doing. I don't think you neccessarily have to come from Israel to have a worthwhile perspective on the situation, but it's hard for someone who has never lived under threat of terrorism to pretend to know what it's really all about.
I just hate the arrogance of someone like Uri Dan, who basically wants everyone else other than him to shut up and stop arguing and never question Israel again, cause if you do you're a bad Jew. This is why a lot of these Israeli hardliners see eye-to-eye with our own tyrannical, "with us or against us" President. They can always tell a fellow traveler.
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