This goes beyond Cinema

Rating: 9/10 (2 February 2006)

When I first heard Steven Spielberg was making a Movie about Munich 1972 my heart sank. I thought to myself: there goes one more director I'm fond of down this road and it felt like I was going to lose an old friend. Let me introduce myself first in context. I am a Palestinian who grew up with Spielberg's films, which helped keep the child in me alive. When you grow up to be happy that Steven is around cuddling your inner child every now and then, the prospect that your ways may separate soon is not a happy thought. For a while I truly tried to ignore this movie release. But after stumbling over what was happening in the media all around this movie, my initial success in keeping away all but vanished. So there I stood tonight and with a heavy heart at the box office of a Munich theater buying tickets for Munich showing at 9:45 p.m.
I stalled as long as I could before going in talking in the hall with my friend, getting a drink, then peanuts and a Mars Bar well, when we finally made it in the ads were done, the lights were going out and the movie was starting. As I saw the Amblin Entrainment clip, I thought to myself: this is not right... the boy in the moon and the subject at handthis does not fit together well. But before I could continue the though, something strange happened once the first scene of the movie started I got involved and I couldn't tell you why. The director got my attention, not by a trick but rather by something which is more complex. This is what I will attempt to convey through this review and which is at the heart of this movie and it is there in the first scene.
Outside of the Olympic City before closed gates stands a group of young men (in a totally believable seventies outfit) with the intent of getting in. Shortly after I was almost caught off guard when I find out that they are in fact the perpetrators. In hindsight I notice that there was no psychological distancing applied in the scene. In fact this is a stance throughout the movie... simply put: its up-close and personal. If you should feel any distance to any character in the movie it is your own, for those who made the movie have gone to great length to eliminate this distance. This is the first ingredient to this complex work of art.
Next comes the characters of whom we get introduced to Avner first I like to call him the loving one, for he is introduced through the love he hold for his family and is saved by it. In the course of the movie there will be the righteous, the skeptic, the technocrat, the charmer, the Zealot and many more. Avner is a young Mossad Agent, a Sabra (born in the state of Israel) and son of an Army Hero. He is expecting a child with his young wife and is faced with a mission in the aftermath of Munich. The events hit him hard and he is willing to take on this mission of retaliation. At this point two other qualities of this movie are revealed: The characters are not defined by their respective roles in the movie, but are separate from them and thus become even more real; and the ability of the script to get to the point very efficiently.
Pivotal messages are conveyed with a directness seldom seen in a movie, especially when dealing with a subject matter which is so delicate as the conflict at hand. In the war room scene with Golda Meir the rational behind retaliation is introduced juxtaposed against response. In a very short scene light is shed on the political reasons for doing what is then to ensue in the course of this story. And this scene opens the way for the fourth and most important element employed in this movie; namely: questioning.
Munich questions all involved and involves you in the process. The movie stirs you up, not because it is throwing issues at you, but because it is asking you questions up-close and personal involving real people and conflicts. The movie does so without taking sides. Here I need to point out that one should not mix-up taking sides with perspective. A story needs to be told by some kind of protagonist, in our case it is the Mossad agent Avner. Relating the story from his perspective did not, in the case of this movie, entail taking his side.
Steven Spielberg and his team produced a masterpiece, where craft is employed to achieve the effects needed in order to maintain the delicate stance the makers have taken, all the while remaining human. This movie is not trying to be balanced in dealing with the subject matter. It is rather bringing us closer to the inner child, which without bias nor hate, with naivety without ignorance puts the questions forth which need humane answers.
So the boy remains in the moon and Steven, my friend, may our one God hear your prayer and mine for peace tonight.