South-African accents !! (& other observations)

Rating: 4/10 (2 February 2006)

There seems to be a lot of blathering about this film's topicality... Yes, Hamas won, YESYESYES the world is going to end..... Well done to Steven Spielberg for releasing the film now (obviously a calculated box-office move) My critique is - slightly - different (I am not going to bore you with questionable information or "leaked" documents about the "FACTS" or with some tired pro-or anti- Israel rant).
Spielberg was either confused, thoughtless or lazy with the Daniel Craig character, a South-African-Afrikaans-Blonde-Blue-Eyed-Zionist-Assassin (phew!). EXTREMELY improbable. With a film that claims to be as resonant and is as "messagy" as "Munich" does, he can't afford to make (BIG) mistakes like this.
I think it comes down to this: Americans (for whom this film was primarily made) don't know what a "Jewish South-African" would look or sound like. Nor would most of the world. They might have SOME (vague) idea of what a "White South-African from the 1970's" looks like: a blonde haired- blue eyed, violent, chunky lookin' fella with a thick, gruff Apartheidy-type "Afrikaans" accent. Jewish South-Africans were classed as "White" in South-Africa under the old dispensation.
So, in my view, Spielberg merely subsumed "South-African Jewishness", an entirely unknown type in the realm of the International Cineplex, under the International Stereotype of "White Oppressive Afrikanerdom", a recognizable, almost "parodic" category. This is troubling for reasons I won't get into here but which should be obvious. Spielberg has sacrificed sense in favour of easy intelligibility or, rather, recognizability for his audience.
Or maybe Daniel Craig is just a rubbish, crass, nuance-less actor who, here, gives a broad, obvious performance? No, this is harsh. I think it calamity is the fault of Steven Spielberg, an arch-enemy of nuanced cinema. This is a calculated, but lazy, move on his part.
Same goes for the accents, generally, in this film. Wouldn't Israeli Jews (Avner, his wife, P.M. Golda Meir & her officials, etc.) speak in Hebrew amongst themselves & not in broken English? (But subtitles for monolingual Americans is box-office poison, right?) Anyway, to start on this would drag into question a number of (improbable & impossible) things about this film that irk me These include that senseless flashback to the massacre from Avner's perspective. He wasn't there, so Spielberg has to make a narrative booboo in his quest to FORCE us, to COERCE us into caring. He exonerates and whitewashes all of Avner's ethical self-questioning - that we've had to sit through for the duration of the movie - by showing us the disparity between the Israeli group's ethical action, their patriotic, hence "necessary" crimes, as opposed to the "Arab" group's heinous, brutal, senseless crime. Why does doesn't Spielberg "flash back" to some of Avner's sins? Because that would tarnish his "hero" status and Spielberg wouldn't have a -RA-RA-, rousing ending. In Spielberg's worldview, it seems, there needs to be a hero. For all the film's "Violence is not the right way", "violence begets violence" rhetoric, for all Spielberg's claims to equivalence, to "showing both sides", we are never in any doubt as to who is RIGHT, morally and ethically justified. And anyway; "Homely", self-searching assassins who dine and laugh with one another; their common, self-less cause? Ahem... Assassins need to be clinical, exacting, to negate conscience. That wouldn't fit in with Spielberg's project: we HAVE to like them, we MUST care for them, believe in their JUSTNESS & it it is they that are invested with conscience & high-mindedness, not the other side (Avner's shakiness on the first kill; they only kill their targets & there's a big, sweaty, tense moral cadenza when this goes wrong; the "What have we done" speeches, etc.
If you haven't guessed by now, I HATE this film: It is far too shallow and insubstantial; its argument is simplistic (witness "Golda Meir's" "grandmotherly" proclamations & the silly scene between Avner and a Palestinian); its message is clunky and hollow; its perspective on "THE SITUATION" is utterly conventional & bland. It is not nearly as controversial as some people seem to think it is (or it wouldn't have been nominated for a "respectable" Oscar).
It DOES contain a few nice cinematic touches, amongst other details, but on the whole: "so what?".
This is a conventionally thrilling "Boy's Movie" badly melded onto a "real life" or "topical" situation. The film shows the limitations of Hollywood's narrative conventions (finely honed & market researched "frivolous entertainment") when dealing with "serious" global, political subject matter.
Anyway, suffice to say that Spielberg is cleaver to explicitly preface his film with a "BASED on real events". He should start, if he can, making films for grown-up people.