Other Reviews in this Series: Duel, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, Empire of the Sun, Amistad, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You Can, Lincoln
Other Spielberg Reviews: Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Bridge of Spies
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Tony Kushner, Eric Roth
Cast: Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciaran Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler, Ayelet Zurer, Geoffrey Rush, Michael Lonsdale
Runtime: 164 mins.
2005
In my estimation, 2005's War of the Worlds and Munich are Spielberg's best one-two punch since 1993's Jurassic Park and Schindler's List. Reviewing Munich is a daunting task, one that I'm not entirely up to. The film is about an Israeli counterterrorist force that is tasked with killing the men who planned the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Hostages were taken, hostages were killed, and now the Israeli government wants vengeance. Our main character is a family man named Avner (Eric Bana) a secret assassination group of four other men. The movie follows their dangerous ethical and subpolitical quest.
Munich feels out of my league because I am painfully ignorant when it comes to history; I knew absolutely nothing about the Munich Olympics or the historical context surrounding that event. I was a bit lost in the early exposition of the movie, but Spielberg, never one to alienate or obfuscate, guides even the most ignorant viewer along with a sure hand.
There is a great deal of critical controversy surrounding Munich. Some herald it as a Spielberg masterpiece, one of the best of the decade. Some dismiss it as soulless or sloppy. Many people feel the movie misrepresents the conflict it is trying to portray, either not taking a strong stance or taking too strong of a stance. It is this aspect that, not being politically minded, I can really say nothing about, beyond my observation that Munich seems to be a bellwether of people's preexisting political proclivities.
I can talk about the craft of the movie. The majority of Munich functions as a political thriller, much more engaging than something like the excellent Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The group has eleven targets, and they work through this list with calculated efficiency, pausing to discuss logistics and ethics between hits. The movie is deliberate in its pacing. Like the characters, as the momentum builds we feel as if we are caught up in something that is growing too big to escape.
Munich is the most polished movie I've seen from Spielberg. A great deal of the plotting is repetitive--get another target, plant a bomb where they're vulnerable, watch from a car until they are in position, repeat--but he and cinematographer Kaminski never let the action feel stale in the slightest. Not a single camera shot is boring or flaccid. Every moment is precisely choreographed and captured. Since the characters spend much of the film waiting around in cars, Spielberg reinvents what that can mean visually. The camera is sly. It roams. Like an agent scanning the vicinity, the camera moves furtively, always glancing in its mirrors, as if it believes a hidden audience might be watching. I've already posted this link in my Duel review, but it merits repeating: shots like this one are spread liberally throughout the movie. Watch that sequence a few times. It's incredible. It does the work of six independent shots in one fluid motion: Establishing shot. Shotgun seat dialogue. Driver seat dialogue. Backseat dialogue. Photograph insert. Character looking at photograph. In my A.I. review I pointed out a two minute sequence that I called the culmination of Spielberg's years of experimenting with reflective surfaces. Munich may have made me eat my words.
The action is brutal, but not exploitative. We feel the thrill of each shootout, bolstered by the pounding minimalist John Williams score, but it's a thrill coupled with dread rather than elation. Nothing in Munich is a triumph, unless you're counting the filmmaking craft on display.
Each of the major sequences in Munich is a masterclass of cinematic details. Spielberg isn't interested in taking a side or staying aloof; he's interested in the human toll at the core of every such violent conflict. We don't have good guys and bad guys here. We have angry aggressors and angry victims, roles which are perpetually changing. As such, Spielberg forces us to get to know the people our protagonists are about to assassinate. As the victims are under observation, they give an academic talk about a subject they're passionate about, or have an interaction with their adolescent daughter. My favorite sequence in the movie has the main character checking into the hotel room next to his target. The target's bed has a bomb under it, and when the target retires for the evening, Avner is to give the signal for detonation by turning off a lamp. This means that Avner must stand out on the balcony to see into the next room, which means that he must have a pleasant conversation with his target when he joins him on the balcony. The entire scene is suffused with detail after detail that humanizes the situation to an unbearable degree, punctuated by a gut-punching ending that I will not reveal here.
This all adds up to the best kind of showing-not-telling filmmaking. Our protagonist does not need to speak at length about the trauma he has suffered. We can see it in his eyes, and we know about it because we were right there with him, suffering the same experiences. The movie does not need to step back and deliver a macrocommentary on the whole situation; that layer of nuance would be somehow dishonest. Spielberg puts us in the trenches with these lost souls, where every decision means death for one side or the other. This slugfest is not meant to be scrutinized but felt.
4.5 / 5 BLOBS
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