Munich (2005 film)
| Munich | |
|---|---|
 The first Poster for Munich | |
| Directed by | Steven Spielberg |
| Written by | Tony Kushner Eric Roth |
| Produced by | Kathleen Kennedy Steven Spielberg Barry Mendel Colin Wilson |
| Starring | Eric Bana Daniel Craig Ciarán Hinds Mathieu Kassovitz Hanns Zischler Geoffrey Rush Ayelet Zorer Gila Almagor Moritz Bleibtreu |
| Cinematography | Janusz Kaminski |
| Edited by | Michael Kahn |
| Music by | John Williams |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures Dreamworks Pictures |
Release dates | December 23, 2005 (US) |
Running time | 164 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $75,000,000 (estimated) |
Munich is an Academy Award-nominated 2005 film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth. The movie is set after the 1972 Munich massacre and follows a Mossad squad, led by "Avner" (Eric Bana), which is ordered to track down and kill the Black September terrorists thought to be responsible for the Israeli athletes' murders. The extent to which the movie represents fact is a matter of debate. Spielberg himself refers to it as "historical fiction" saying it is inspired by actual events, specifically what became known as Operation Wrath of God. The film was shot in various places around Malta [1] (which stands in for Israel, Cyprus, Athens and for Rome and Paris as well, in some scenes) and in Budapest (standing in for London [2], Rome [3] and for the German airport of Fürstenfeldbruck[4]).
Plot
The film is based on the book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team by Canadian journalist George Jonas, which in turn was based on the story of Yuval Aviv, who has claimed to have once been a Mossad agent. In the book, Aviv's story is told through a protagonist called "Avner". The Jonas book was first turned into a made-for-TV movie in 1986 called Sword of Gideon, starring Michael York and directed by Michael Anderson [5] [6].
The film commences with a depiction of the events of the Munich Massacre in 1972, which is then followed by a recreation of the news coverage and snippets of real footage.
Avner, an Israeli-born office worker for Mossad of German descent, is summoned to become the leader of a five-member assassination squad to seek revenge for the Munich Massacre by tracking down and killing the planners responsible for the Black September terror attack. Since Avner is not a high ranking member of Mossad, he is made to sign a renunciation of any official relation to Mossad and made the leader of the group, which consists of Steve (the South African getaway driver), Hans (the German Jew document forger), Robert (a Belgian bomb expert) and Carl (the "worrier" who cleans up after the others). They operate independently of the official structure of Mossad, receiving large amounts of dollars from a Swiss bank.
To help track down the locations of the eleven Black September terrorists (who are dispersed around Europe and the Middle-East), Avner generously pays for help from a French informant named Louis.
The assassination locations include Rome, Cyprus, Paris, Beirut, Athens, and Hoorn.
Sometimes guns are used to carry out the operations; sometimes bombs are substituted. The bombs are usually placed by breaking into the house or apartment and triggered by remote control from a car.
In one case a bomb is hidden in a telephone. After the assassins have observed that the terrorist's wife and daughter have left the house, one of the assassins calls the terrorist from a nearby pay-phone. The plan is to trigger the bomb when the terrorist answers the phone. However, the daughter has returned to the house while the assassins' view is blocked by a truck, and she answers the phone; the assassin at the pay-phone calls just in time warn the man in the car with the remote control that the bomb should not be triggered. After the daughter leaves, the terrorist is phoned again and now answers the phone himself, and the bomb is detonated. It is less powerful than expected, and the man dies only later, in the hospital.
In another case a bomb is hidden below a bed in a hotel. Avner carefully watches the room from the balcony of an adjacent room. After checking that that the terrorist is on the bed, he signals this to others by switching off the light in his room. The bomb turns out to be more powerful than expected, and the couple in the adjacent apartment are hurt along with Avner himself.
After they perform their fourth assassination, they discover that they themselves are becoming targets for assassins. One of the Israelis is murdered by a Dutch mercenary, whom the rest of the team later kills although she is not in the target list. This is in Hoorn, and the guns are disguised as frame mounted bicycle pumps.
Louis gives Avner the location of Ali Hassan Salameh, the mastermind of the Munich Massacre, and they know that if he is assassinated the remaining Mossad assassins will be allowed to return home.
The assassins manage to track down Salameh in Spain, but they are not able to kill him. Later, the assassins are relieved of their duties. Avner goes to his new home in Brooklyn, where he becomes paranoid about his and his family's safety. He endures flashbacks of the Munich Massacre and comes to question the value of his mission.
Response and reaction
The film garnered a 78% favorable rating from critics (per Rotten Tomatoes) and 7.7 out of 10 from internet visitors to the IMDB. Roger Ebert praised the film [7] and placed it on his top ten list of 2005. James Berardinelli gave the film an ecstatic review[8]; it was the only movie in 2005 which he gave four stars, and he also put it on his Top 100 Films of All Time list.
As of March 15, 2006, the film has grossed $110,479,849 worldwide[9], making it a worldwide success; however, it has only grossed $47,132,785 in the United States (domestic).
Awards and nominations
Steven Spielberg received a Best Director Golden Globe nomination, as well as a DGA nomination for Best Director. On January 31, 2006, the film received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Film Editing, Original Music Score (by John Williams), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director.
Controversies
Journalist Yossi Melman of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz has said that the book is "strewn with mistakes", adding that after a lawsuit identified Aviv as Avner, "investigative reports about him revealed that he represented himself as a Mossad agent even though he had never worked in the Mossad and certainly had not participated in operations to kill those involved in the athletes' murder. Aviv, as he emerged from these investigative reports, had a special fondness for conspiracy theories; it turned out that he was willing to hire out his services to anyone who was willing to pay, even to both sides of the same dispute" .
Multiple reviewers have criticized Spielberg for what they call his equating the Israeli assassins with the Palestinian terrorists. Leon Wieseltier wrote in The New Republic, "... Worse, ‘Munich’ prefers a discussion of counter-terrorism to a discussion of terrorism; or it thinks that they are the same discussion".
Melman and other critics of the book and the film have said that the story's premise — that Israeli agents had second thoughts about their work — is not supported by interviews or public statements.
A retired head of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service, Avi Dichter, likened Munich to a children's adventure story. "There is no comparison between what you see in the movie and how it works in reality", he said in an interview with Reuters.
In a Time Magazine cover story about the film on December 4, 2005, Spielberg said that the source of the film had had second thoughts about his actions. "There is something about killing people at close range that is excruciating," Spielberg said. "It's bound to try a man's soul". Of the real Avner, Spielberg says, "I don’t think he will ever find peace".
Contrary criticisms of the film suggest that politics are warping critics' interpretations of the film. Some critics have claimed an Israeli bias in the movie, as many others complain of Palestinian bias. The review of the film on BBC World News accused the movie of being too impartial, being too balanced and refusing to take a side to the point where it had no clear message. Others have criticised the movie for painting the sense of duty of killing terrorists with a sympathetic brush.
However the film has had several defenders. Ebert defended the film in his review by stating that 'by not taking any sides, Spielberg has taken both sides'. Several of the film's defenders state that the film was never meant to offer truth but merely raise debate on the issues touched upon in the film and also to draw attention to today's events. Indeed James Berardinelli who named the film the best of 2005 stated that, Spielberg asks, but cannot answer, a key question: Is a war against terrorism winnable? We would like to think the answer is "yes". It would help us sleep better at night. But Munich points out a sobering truth: for every terrorist killed, there is another - possibly a worse one - waiting to take his place [14].
David Edelstein of Slate argued that, 'The Israeli government and many conservative and pro-Israeli commentators have lambasted the film for naiveté, for implying that governments should never retaliate. But an expression of uncertainty and disgust is not the same as one of outright denunciation. What Munich does say—and what I find irrefutable—is that this shortsighted tit-for-tat can produce a kind of insanity, both individual and collective' [15].
Relation to historical events
 |
Although a work of 'historical fiction', many actual events and figures from the early 1970s are depicted in the film. On the Israeli side Prime Minister Golda Meir has an important role in the film, and other military and political leaders such as Attorney General Meir Shamgar and Mossad chief Zvi Zamir also appear.
The actual hostage-taking and massacre of the Israeli athletes goes for historical authenticity to the point of using Israeli actor Gur Weinberg, one month old in September 1972, to portray his father Moshe, the wrestling coach and first hostage killed. Unlike the earlier film, 21 Hours at Munich, the positioning of the Israeli hostages in the helicopters and the fact that all of them were shot is also historically accurate.
The named members of Black September, and their deaths are also mostly factual. Wael Zwaiter, a cousin of Yasser Arafat and translator at the Libyan embassy in Rome was shot fourteen times in the lobby of his apartment 41 days after Munich. On December 8th of that year Mahmoud Hamshiri, a senior PLO figure was killed in Paris by a bomb concealed in the table below his telephone. Others killed during this period include Mohammed Boudia, Basil al-Kubasi, Abad al-Chir, Zaid Muchassi, some of whose deaths are depicted in the film. Ali Hassan Salameh was also a real person, and a prominent member of Black September. He was killed by car bomb in Beirut in 1979. The commando raid in Beirut, known as Operation Spring of Youth, also occurred. This attack included future Prime Minister Ehud Barak and he briefly appears in the film. The film does not mention the case of Ahmed Bouchiki, an innocent man killed by the Israelis in Norway when they confused him with Salameh.
The methods used to hunt and kill the Black September members were, in real life, much more complicated and involved than portrayed in the film. For example, the tracking of the Black September cell members was achieved by the Mossad, not an un-named third party as in the film. Other factual errors also abound in this portrayal of the events surrounding "Operation Wrath of God".
Trivia
- Ben Kingsley was cast as the role of Ephraim, but left and was replaced by Geoffrey Rush due to the film being delayed.
- The film was originally to be filmed in the summer of 2004 but was delayed because Spielberg was reportedly unhappy with the script. Other sources said that security concerns had delayed production.
- Shortly after finishing promotion on War of the Worlds, Spielberg went right into production on this film in July 2005, wrapping up in late September for a Christmas 2005 release.
- Spielberg hired Eyal Arad, a former strategist for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, to market the film.
- A U.S. phone number with an exchange other than 555 is mentioned in the film.
- One of many non-James Bond films to star an actor who (as of yet, will) portray 007 (Daniel Craig) and an actor who has played a Bond nemesis (Michael Lonsdale). Others include Robin and Marian starring Sean Connery and Robert Shaw (who faced off in From Russia with Love), and The Longest Day, with Connery and Gert Fröbe (who co-starred in Goldfinger).
- The last scene of the film contains a shot with the World Trade Center clearly visible. It was created using computer-generated imagery. Some critics have understood it as an allusion to the World Trade Center bombing or the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Eric Bana | Avner |
| Daniel Craig | Steve |
| Ciarán Hinds | Carl |
| Mathieu Kassovitz | Robert |
| Hanns Zischler | Hans |
| Geoffrey Rush | Ephraim |
| Michael Lonsdale | Papa |
| Ayelet July Zurer | Daphna (Avner's Wife) |
| Marie-Josée Croze | (Dutch killer) Jeanette |
| Gila Almagor | Avner's Mother |
Awards
Won
- Central Ohio Film Critics: Best Ensemble
- Kansas City Films Critics: Best Picture, Best Direction in a Motion Picture
- Washington D.C. Films Critics: Best Picture, Best Direction in a Motion Picture
Nominations
- 78th Academy Awards:
- Best Picture
- Best Director (Steven Spielberg)
- Best Screenplay - Adapted (Tony Kushner and Eric Roth)
- Best Editing (Michael Kahn)
- Best Original Score (John Williams)
- American Cinema Editors: Best Edited Feature Film - Dramatic (Michael Kahn)
- Broadcast Film Critics Association: Best Director (Steven Spielberg)
- Directors Guild of America: Best Director (Steven Spielberg)
- 63rd Golden Globe Awards:
- Best Director - Motion Picture (Steven Spielberg)
- Best Screenplay - Motion Picture (Tony Kushner and Eric Roth)
- Motion Picture Sound Editors: Sound Editing in Feature Film - Dialogue and Automated Dialogue Replacement
- Online Film Critics Society: Best Picture, Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Screenplay - Adapted (Tony Kushner and Eric Roth), Best Editing (Michael Kahn), Best Original Score (John Williams)
See also
References
- Richard Girling "A Thirst for Vengeance: The Real Story behind Munich". The Sunday Times. January 15, 2006
External links
- "Spielberg takes on terror", Time Magazine, 12 December 2005.
- "The Lessons of Munich", A discussion of the film from Foreign Policy Magazine
- "Spielberg's Munich Pact" , Editorial critical of the movie from "Frontpage.com" (conservative website).
- A delicate balance: Showing both sides of the '72 Olympic massacre is Spielberg's big challenge - Newsday.com review
- "Munich" not what conservatives say, a positive review of the film from Israeli commentator Alan D. Abbey on "Ynetnews.com".
- "Movie-2-DVD Special: Spielberg's Munich", Historical background and location info.
- The Israeli Response to the 1972 Munich Massacre – Includes an extensive overview of the Munich Massacre and the aftermath, including an in-depth analysis of the Mossad counter-terrorist operations described in George Jonas' book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, the primary source for the events portrayed in the movie.
- NPR's Fresh Air interview, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner co-wrote the screenplay for the new Stephen Spielberg film Munich.
- An article from The Clapperboard blog on the cinematography of Munich.
- The Hunt For Black September, an article from ICG Magazine about the cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and his contribution to the movie.
- Munich, Mentoring & Moviolas an interview with Michael Kahn, film editor in "Munich".
- Photographing "Munich" by Karen Ballard, on-set photographer for "Munich"