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<\/a>What\u2019s so dispiriting about revisiting Steven Spielberg\u2019s Munich<\/em> ten years after its initial release is not how good or \u00a0bad the film looks but how inessential it feels. Given its subject matter and the many ways in which we are daily confronted with ever expanding violence, much of it fueled by race hatred or justified by past victimizations, Munich<\/em> ought to be feel fresh.<\/p>\nIt doesn\u2019t. It feels stale, as though subsequent developments have rendered it\u2026not naive, exactly, but certainly shallower than I remembered it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve often maintained that Speilberg is the perfect modern, mass-audience director because his films reveal so much of themselves on a first viewing.\u00a0Maybe that\u2019s why his serious dramas, while garnering critical acclaim, don\u2019t engender the same devotion as E.T.<\/em> or Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/em>. Entertainments can be consumed endlessly. Serious art can prompt new and different conversations and trains of thought. But lectures\u2013even good ones\u2013aren\u2019t something you want to go back to again and again.<\/p>\n (comments originally published at Viewpoint<\/em>, a precursor to this blog)<\/span><\/p>\n If there is one knock against Steven Speilberg that I accept, it is that he has never presented moral ambiguity or complexity very realistically. His villains are Nazis or slave owners or mindless animals\u2013sharks, dinosaurs, martians\u2013misogynist men (The Color Purple<\/em>), Thugee cult members, or faceless truck drivers. Much has been made prior to the release of Munich<\/em> about how Tony Kushner\u2019s script gives the Palestinians their say (before it kills them), and it does, but this is a film that thinks it is marinated in ambivalence when it is really only braised. To decide whether you will think the film is subtly nuanced or typically heavy-handed you need only ask whether you are the sort of film watcher who found the final shot\u2013of the New York skyline in 1979 with two towers just off center\u2013pregnantly symbolic or whether you are the sort who was already fishing for your car keys and didn\u2019t even see it.<\/p>\n If you are in the latter of these two categories then you probably won\u2019t mind that the conversation between Avner and the Arab about home is given an exclamation point later in the film as Louis, Avner\u2019s information broker, looks in a store window at a home furnishing store and tells Avner that kitchens are expensive. You probably won\u2019t mind a second scene between Avner and his mother where she exonerates him for sins unconfessed just in case you were using the restroom during the first one. You may even think that Golda Meier\u2019s prominently featured admonition that \u201cevery civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values\u201d is something anything more than a slightly eloquent book-end for Avner\u2019s own conclusion that \u201cI believe anyone is capable of anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the most docile viewer, though, must feel led by the nose when Speilberg intercuts scenes of the terrorist attacks into Avner\u2019s daydreams. Much like those at the end of Dead Man Walking<\/em>, these images can be effective at getting the audience to see the intimate relationship between remote causes and immediate effects, but they also seem oddly out of place. For one, Avner is envisioning events he could not possibly have seen, so their inclusion to juxtapose\u00a0Avner\u2019s anguish is a bit of a cheat\u2013used more to increase the audience\u2019s moral oscillations than represent his own. For another, shouldn\u2019t Avner be more haunted by his own violence? Structurally these scenes [of Israeli athletes massacred at the airport] needed to be at the beginning of the film. Yes, they might\u00a0have less dramatic effect there, but the whole thrust of film\u2019s moral trajectory is a movement from righteous certainty towards wilderness doubt as the actual events that prompt vengeance recede from memory, gradually replaced by our growing awareness of our own flawed humanity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The film hasn\u2019t changed. Prior to re-watching the film, I remembered being put off by the 9\/11 comparison and mentioning it in my review. But I didn\u2019t remember some of the other illustrations I had blogged about the film\u2019s bluntness.<\/p>\n The Munich<\/em> DVD comes with a short introduction by Steven Spielberg. I\u2019ve written some extended thoughts elsewhere<\/a> about DVD commentary tracks as epitexts. I think this introduction could be looked at the same way. Certainly introductions are one example given by Gerard Genette of paratexts<\/a>. Spielberg\u2019s comments are informal and tonally conversational, but I have to believe they are carefully scripted. As such, they may or may not say anything about how the film \u00a0but they certainly provide insight into how the director wants<\/em> the film to be interpreted.<\/p>\n Looked at in that light, Spielberg\u2019s introduction pulls into focus some of my dissatisfaction with the film. First he says, \u201cI am not attacking Israel.\u201d I\u2019m not saying he should (attack Israel), but by categorically saying he is not, is he not undercutting all of the (many) subsequent claims of that this is a complicated issue about which reasonable people could disagree?<\/p>\n Arguments about moral equivalence are dicey, and attempts to differentiate similar acts\u2013in this case acts of violence\u2013are always harder than attempts to conflate them. In the film Avner claims \u201cthere\u2019s no peace at the end of this\u201d and questions whether or not the Israeli assassinations have made things worse (by ceding the moral high ground or provoking even more rounds of reprisals). Yet while the film gestures at these questions, it never fully convinces me that it grapples with them. It merely has people *say* they have grappled with them as a way of differentiating themselves from others who have used similar methods. Spielberg says, \u201cWhat\u2019s relevant is the need to go through a careful process\u201d and \u201chighlighting some of the dilemmas that need to be discussed.\u201d Does the latter mean that the film will prompt discussion of some of those dilemmas? More importantly, if what is relevant is \u201cthe need to go through a careful process\u201d why is so much of that process truncated and abbreviated in favor of\u2026oh arguments about whether or not leave the woman\u2019s robe open or generic suspense through timing. (When the girl answers the phone can they stop the bomb in time?) \u00a0The \u201ccareful process\u201d? \u00a0There are some cabinet level discussions and Golda Meir says \u201ctoday I am hearing with new ears\u201d and that\u2019s that. In that regard Munich<\/em> suffers slightly, I think, in comparison to Zero Dark Thirty<\/em>, which takes Munich<\/em>\u2018s structural order (twenty minutes of deliberation followed by two and half hours of the mission) and reverses it (two hours of deliberation and thirty minutes of mission).<\/p>\n But the comparison to Zero Dark Thirty<\/em>, while telling, is also a red herring. Because while I esteem Bigelow\u2019s film more than I do Spielberg\u2019s, \u00a0I still see find it too carefully constructed, too confined by its own moral seriousness Neither film gives me what I\u2019m so thirsty for, which is a hand in thinking through some issues and arriving at a conclusion<\/em>. A point of view. A statement. Because the careful process is important, but only if it leads somewhere. Is Spielberg\u2019s point really that the difference between Israel and the Palestinians that Israel went through a careful process? And if so, does that careful process help the actual agents who execute the plan or just the government and citizens who countenance it?<\/p>\n That last question is somewhat cynical and suspicious, and I would esteem Munich<\/em> more if I felt Spielberg was aware of it\u2026that Avner\u2019s doubts were more deeply felt and not simply rhetorical exercises in devil\u2019s advocacy. There\u2019s a braver, less feel good version of the movie in here somewhere that would be more willing to draw conclusions from Avner\u2019s doubts and psychological scars rather than simply exploit them for pathos.<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s not up to artists to answer the unanswerable questions. But I like it when they try, even if I am not sure their answer is right. Because in trying to arrive at an answer, they encourage me to keep trying, that there is value in the process not just because a process dilutes my accountability but because a careful consideration can lead to insight. In a world that is increasingly filled with news stories that raise my fears and break my heart, I don\u2019t want or need art that simply mirrors our own moral confusion back to me. I want films that communicate something useful to me.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean films with happy endings. And it doesn\u2019t mean that all films must be serious. There is plenty of room for entertainments and mindless diversions. But if a film is going to be serious, let it be serious in the best way. Let it not bathe in the seriousness of its subject matter without engaging with its own ideas and demanding<\/em> (at the very, very, very least inviting) us to do so as well.<\/p>\n What are the films that are essential? I think they may differ for many of us, but by essential I don\u2019t mean \u201cfor everyone.\u201d I mean that *I* need them, because when my spirit is brought low by a shooting or a news story, or a postmodern malaise I am comforted less by a mindless distraction than I am by a display of artistic curisoity. The Man Who Planted Trees<\/em> isn\u2019t going to give me a blue print for dismantling agribusiness and stopping fracking and reducing carbon emissions, but it never fails to inspire me and remind me that one person being faithful in small things over large periods of time can have a huge impact on the world around him. Ragtime<\/em> isn\u2019t going to make people who don\u2019t understand why the confederate flag is hurtful magnanimous towards people who do, but it never fails to remind me that a seventeen year-old, white suburban boy can see a black man praying on screen, asking God why He has put such a *rage* in his heart and realize for the first time, \u201cwe are the same, you and I.\u201d The End of the Affair<\/em> isn\u2019t going to bring anyone I love back from the dead, but it never fails to remind me that love most emphatically does not end when you stop seeing someone. Those movies may or may not be better, more artful, more accomplished films than Munich<\/em>, but they are some of the ones I turn to when I am in need in a way I\u2019ve never turned to a Spielberg film.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a high bar, I know. But please understand, I am not saying that any film that doesn\u2019t clear that bar is worthless, or bad, or a waste of time. I\u2019m just saying its not essential<\/em>. \u00a0I gave Munich<\/em> a B+ when I reviewed it ten years ago. Today, I think it\u2019s a better movie than that, but I would probably grade it slightly lower. Is that a double standard? Of course it is. But when something deals with religious identity or terrorism or any of the most serious questions that haunt and plague us, simply being a good movie doesn\u2019t feel quite good enough.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When something deals with religious identity or terrorism or any of the most serious questions that haunt and plague us, simply being a good movie doesn’t feel quite good enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1555,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,16],"tags":[1870,408],"class_list":["post-13697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-10-years-later","category-reviews","tag-munich","tag-steven-spielberg"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat I Said Then<\/h2>\n
What I Say Now<\/h2>\n
The Final Word<\/h2>\n