A Literate, Intelligent, Emotional Thriller About Morality Amidst Political Murder

Rating: 10/10 (10 January 2006)

"Munich" is the first time that Steven Spielberg has combined all his story telling talents to serve a literate script.
It certainly seems as if Eric Roth's early draft outlined the basic plot while surely it was Tony Kushner, in his first for-hire screenplay, who added in the extensive Yiddishkeit, Talmudic discussions and moral angst. The dialog also refers to the meaning of "home" and the Middle East, as he did in his recent play "Homebody/Kabul" (let alone, of course, "E.T."). The film follows virtually the same themes and emotional trajectory as the recent Israeli completely fictional "Walk on Water." In both films, the sins and merits of the parents are passed on as responsibilities to the next generation that we know will lead to the nihilism of suicide bombers.
The opening montages of the playing out of the 1972 Olympic hijacking smoothly edits together real broadcasts with recreated perspectives from around the world as sportscasters were drawn into horrific breaking news. The hair, clothes and production design, and particularly the evocative pop music including multilingual covers of American hits, seamlessly consistently maintain the period. These images are a continuing almost dream-like leit motif throughout the film as the story plays out, so that all sides know why they fight yet literally starts blurring their moral differences. Ironically, these images reinforce why terrorism is successful at drawing the world's attention while generating its own continuing cycle of revenge.
With different characters schematically representing different points of view and philosophies, the motley-accented international cast creates mostly individual people, from the Israeli government apparatchiks to the gathering of the diverse Jewish team of incongruous action heroes to glimpses of other terrorists, and they spend a lot of time having midrashic debates over home-cooked meals.
The film is anchored by a brilliant Eric Bana as "Avner" who wrenchingly goes, Jack Ryan-like, from an intelligence analyst to active field agent, but then more -- to personal revenger to anguished post-traumatic-stress syndromed paranoid with haunted eyes. (It is a shame that he's not getting remembered at award time, but it has been a great year for lead actors.) I enjoyed the irony of his character posing as a German, particularly to gain access to ideologues who help the Baader-Meinhof Gang, with Germany serving as a locus for international terrorist planning, whether Basques' E.T.A. or I.R.A. etc., then as it did with the 9/11 plotters (and portended further at the end with the view of the pre-9/11 NYC skyline).
The formation of the team is freighted with other ironies as well - Daniel Craig with his accent, body language and voice creates another unique character in his career as a steely, unreflective South African who is solidly single-minded in his goal: "Don't f*ck with the Jews!" and can just as easily pretend to be an ANC supporter. Mathieu Kassovitz is marvelously nervous as a toy maker turned bomb maker, and Hanns Zischler is very old world fastidious as an art dealer turned documents forger and team accountant regularly toting up the cost of each kill. Ciarán Hinds disappears into his ruthlessly efficient, gray Mossad bureaucrat, recalling Alec Guinness as George Smiley in another intelligence service in a Cold War with questions (and there's also close-up shot of an umbrella in London that recalls an infamous assassination from that period).
A lot of the film's tension is caught up with their efforts to avoid collateral damage, which, symbolically, gets harder and harder for them to do. It is a bit heavy-handed but very effective for the emotional core of the film that those who feel guilty become the most vulnerable.
Too much in service to the themes and less to credibility are the mercenary information merchants. Ironically, Mathieu Amalric is usually cast in French films as a Woody Allen type, such as in "Kings and Queen (Rois et reine)," while Michael Lonsdale, a la his role in "Ronin," as the patriarch of this amoral family business perfectly embodies the European intellectual sang-froid of anarchists with principles available to the highest bidder of the moment, like the information equivalent of Nicolas Cage's gun seller in "Lord of War," that is the detritus of colonialism. But it's as if they are the sole confidential informant in a cop movie, let alone ones who rent the same safe house to opposing terrorists at the same time, for an interlude that simplistically allows for presentation of the PLO's unambiguous position. There's lots of amusing references to hiding behind American dollars, but at that time there would have been plenty of Arab petrodollars available for similar nefarious ends. There's also a Mata Hari side story that goes a bit over the top visually, James Bond-style. This is definitely a hard-R film.
Very unusual for a Spielberg film are the strong, physically dynamic women and "Avner"s emotional ties to them, from a baby to the tiny grandmotherly Iron Lady Golda Meir. Noted Israeli actresses play "Avner"s mother and wife: Gila Almagor both provides the inevitable Holocaust resonance and sounds like a Biblical Hannah in telling of her prayers for a son, and Ayelet Zorer, who was also so moving in "Nina's Tragedies (Ha-Asonot Shel Nina)" is not the usual wifely appendage but an essential, beautifully sensuous grounding for her tormented husband in mature scenes that are unlike any previous Spielberg film (finally contradicting the "Dawson's Creek" critique that there's no sex or romance in his films). But it's an unnecessary production design repetitive element to have the mother's apartment oddly filled with menorahs.
These nuclear family relationships intelligently link "Munich" to "A History of Violence" as a reflective, geo-political counterpart.
The tight editing of Janusz Kaminski's beautiful and varied cinematography (dark Graham Greene-murky Europe vs. the blinding light of Mediterranean machine guns-and-bikinis Israel) is a continuing subtext in service to what is being said.
John Williams' score is uncharacteristically subdued and is in service to the tension in each scene.