Asking questions rather than giving a simple answer

Rating: 9/10 (2 February 2006)

*Munich* is a complex movie, reminding us that film makers and artists have to rather ask complex questions instead of giving simple answers. It is much more than just a plot about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The movie is as much about war and what it does to people, about the difference in old-school wars against big numbers of enemies you can hardly discern when shooting and the modern war on small bands of terrorists you have to look in the eye, the beginnings of modern terrorism and the current state of it.
It's main theme is the problem that just causes may lead to terrible consequences taking one to the same moral level than one's enemy. Spielberg pictures life as it is: a continuum, not a series of distinct moments. You can suddenly find yourself on the wrong side without being able to point down to the one moment you went wrong.
Even after having watched the whole movie the viewer is unable to tell if or when the moral predicament gets awry. And that although the script gives us two Killings (and a "collateral damage") which are not on the original agenda.
Some critics take exception to the way the Israeli athletes in Munich are depicted as cardboard characters. But then, most of what happens in the Olympic village and on Munich's airfield is only shown in retrospect by Eric Bana's character, the leader of the Israeli killing team, who hasn't been in Munich. He envisions what we see and ultimately - in the world of the movie - don't know!
Not much of the original attack is shown from an outside, objective perspective: We see two US athletes helping the Palestinian terrorists into the village, how they get around in the deserted floors and how they enter the athletes rooms. There's also some glimpses of the media hype surrounding - and eventually sabotaging one attempt to free the hostages - the whole affair. Everything else is only Avner's imaginations.