Munich

Two wrongs don’t make a right. That is what most of us are taught in our formative years, and most of us believe just that. Yet when terrorism rears its ugly head and innocent people are killed, the general response  by our governments is to fight back an eye for an eye, Old Testament style. When extremists brought down the World Trade Center, killing hundreds of innocent people, the world’s response was to track down those terrorists and kill them. Not arrest them. Not put them on trial. Kill them. Most people would see that as justice and a consequence for their actions, and you’ll get no argument from me. But there is a difference between trying, convicting and executing someone and sending armed forces in to gun them down. When Nazi war criminals were captured in the aftermath of World War II, many were tried for their atrocities and hung. They died either way, but the difference matters to those who were charged with making it happen. Steven Spielberg, a Jewish man himself, understood that distinction, and it is one of the main themes of his 2005 film Munich. 

The catalyst for everything that happens in this film is the terrorist attack by the Palestinian militant group Black September during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. The end result was eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team being killed and the attackers escaping. Avner Kaufman (Eric Bana), a Mossad agent of German-Jewish ancestry, is chosen to lead a team on a mission to assassinate eleven Palestinians involved in the massacre. On the direction of his handler Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), and to give the Israeli government plausible deniability, Kaufman resigns from the Mossad and operates with no official ties to Israel. His wife, pregnant with their first child, relocates to Brooklyn while he will be off on this assignment for an indeterminate amount of time. 

His team is made up of four Jewish volunteers from around the world: South African driver Steve (Daniel Craig), Belgian toy-maker and explosives expert Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), former Israeli soldier Carl (Ciarán Hinds), and German antique dealer and document forger Hans (Hanns Zischler). This team acts on information provided by a French informant, Louis (Mathieu Amalric), whose family has ties to the French Resistance. 

Throughout the course of their mission, things continue to go wrong, though they do manage to kill several of the names on their list. Some of the problems that arise, though, stem from faulty or outdated materials provided by Louis, whom several of the team begin to doubt. Meanwhile, the assassins begin to argue amongst themselves about the morality and logistics of their mission, their relative inexperience at what they are doing as well as the apparent ambivalence about accidentally killing innocent bystanders in the pursuit of their prey. 

Eventually, Avner grows completely disillusioned and joins his wife in Brooklyn, where he is plagued with images of the violence he has experienced, the murders of the Israeli Olympians, as well as the realization that he is being followed by the very group that recruited him in the first place. 

This is a work of fiction. However, many things depicted are based loosely on factual events or are tied into real events such as the attack in Munich. It also includes many historical figures. Spielberg made the depiction of the hostage-taking and killing as accurate as possible, too, not shying away from the violence and gore. This helps us to be on Kaufman’s side even when he and his team are gunning down people in cold blood. 

Also helping that is his determination not to target the innocent in their pursuit of vengeance. In one of the early assassinations, they target a family man, planting a bomb in his telephone. They go out of their way to make sure he is alone, even having to stop the detonation at the last moment when his daughter runs back inside having forgotten something. The film sets this up perfectly, too, so that you actually believe she will be killed accidentally. It’s a brilliant bit of staging, reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock at his best.

Kaufman starts out the film inexperienced and uncertain. He’s no stone-cold killer at this point and hesitates when faced with shooting his target point-blank. Later it will be said that the more killing you do, the less it bothers you until it just becomes a part of your life. You can get used to anything, even horrific levels of cruelty, if you are exposed to it long enough. Kaufman learns this lesson over the course of the film, and it informs his decision to finally get out while he still has a bit of his humanity left. 

Spielberg is perhaps the biggest Jew in Hollywood. It is therefore a bit of a surprise that he has put himself between Israel and the Palestinians in his look at decades of terrorism and reprisals. Kaufman, when speaking to another, asks whether it is worth fighting over a barren land of clay. The response he gets refers to how most every other people have a land that is their home, no matter how much it may seem undesirable. He and his descendants would fight for hundreds of years just to finally have a place they could call their home. It’s a mindset that cannot be fully comprehended by those who have such a place already. Spielberg’s film doesn’t take sides in the conflict, which has gotten him labeled as “no friend of Israel” while at the same time having his film be labeled as an attack on Palestine. Ironically, by not taking sides, he has been branded as taking both sides at the same time. 

One thing that gets hammered home repeatedly is that going after the men responsible for the Munich attacks is ultimately a fruitless endeavor. For every evil person in the world, there are a dozen others waiting to take their place. Can you kill every one that steps up and takes over? Of course not. And will that killing ever end? No. Even more dangerous men will seek out their own form of reprisals, and it will go on and on and on. But to not do so would be against the beliefs of Kaufman’s superiors, who state early on that “Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.” That’s shorthand for saying state-sanctioned murder.

The war between Israel and Palestine is likely to go on until the end of time, fueled by hatred and a lack of compromises. I don’t pretend to understand all that is going on between these two peoples, but I know enough to realize that it is dangerous to side with either one. Spielberg’s movie is bold and has a lot to say, but because of the subject matter, it is impossible to take a real stand in favor or either side. It is a haunting film. It paints a picture of what could and would happen to any of us if we compromised our values to defend our people and our country. In an ideal world, that would never be necessary. But we don’t live in an ideal world, do we?

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, and Barry Mendel

Best Director: Steven Spielberg

Best Adapted Screenplay: Tony Kushner and Eric Roth

Best Film Editing: Michael Kahn

Best Original Score: John Williams

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Release Date: December 23, 2005

Running Time: 163 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciarán Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler, and Geoffrey Rush

Directed by: Steven Spielberg