Twenty years ago this month, director Steven Spielberg released Municha historical drama and revenge thriller based on the book revenge for Jordi Jonas.
The film dramatizes the account of a retribution mission directed against the men behind the murders of 11 members of Israel’s Olympic team at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany.
Two decades after its launch, Munich it feels unusually timely given the ongoing conflicts in Gaza between the Palestinians and Israel.
now, Watch with us is looking back Munich to see how it holds up.
The king of entertainment! From Indiana Jones to Jaws, Steven Spielberg is one of the most well-known and successful directors of all time. The ET director was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in December 1946, though his family moved to Phoenix 10 years later, where he spent his formative years. Spielberg’s interest in cinema (…)
The film’s Black September attack is unflinchingly brutal
Black September was the name of the Palestinian group who carried out the Munich attack on September 5-6, 1972. At the beginning of the film, Munich returns to the attack in disturbing detail. It seems that Spielberg tried to depict the details as accurately as possible, including the fatal injuries suffered by members of the Israeli delegation.
These scenes had to be in the film because they are the driving motivation behind the assassination campaign to eliminate anyone involved in the Black September attack. The film takes some liberties with how these acts of retribution play out, however Eric BanaAvner Kaufman was based on a real person, Yuval Aviv. A year earlier he made his debut as James Bond Casino Royale, Daniel Craig he starred in this film as Steve, a member of Avner’s team.
The action is intense
Spielberg has always been good at depicting action on screen, especially during the first two decades of his career, when he directed mostly adventure, sci-fi, and fantasy films. These skills were passed down Munichas violence between Avner’s team and their targets erupts in the streets and beyond.
This is the kind of violence that doesn’t spare viewers, and some innocent people are caught in the crossfire between the two sides. And over time, Avner openly questions the purpose of his mission.
‘Munich’ humanizes the Palestinian perspective
At no point does Spielberg’s film suggest that the Black September attacks were in any way justified. But Munich takes the time to offer an alternative perspective of Ali (Omar Metwally), a member of the PLO who is initially unaware of the true identity of Avner’s team. In the scene above, Ali explains why the Palestinian people are still fighting Israel over land claimed by both sides. Avner dismisses Ali’s goals for a Palestinian nation and making Israel “disappear” as a dream, but nothing he says can dissuade the other man.
The words that resonate here are Avner’s warning that killing Jews will make the world believe that Palestinians are “animals,” to which Ali replies, “Yes, but then the world will see how they’ve turned us into animals. They’ll start asking questions about the conditions in our cages.” It is hard not to see the parallel between these lines and the global sympathy for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the concurrent rise in anti-Semitic sentiment around the world.
For filmmaker James Vanderbilt, working with Rami Malek and Russell Crowe on the historical drama Nuremberg was simply “amazing”. “Rami is such a class act, and he goes so deep. Russell, the same way…Michael Shannon,” Vanderbilt, 49, told Us Weekly exclusively at the American Film Institute Festival premiere of his new film, Nuremberg, (…)
‘Munich’ asks big questions that it can’t really answer
In the end, Avner is repulsed by the nature of his mission and openly questions whether he and his team were used for retribution or simply as agents to take down the Palestinian leaders. You don’t get a clear answer for that, and Munich it does not offer a resolution or an easy answer. Spielberg doesn’t pretend to have the answers because there aren’t any, and the conflict between the Israeli people and the Palestinian people seems more intractable than ever.
Movies don’t exist to chart the course of our lives or make decisions for us. But they can make people think and consider the impact of their actions. In this sense, Munich it’s worth going back to, even now. It still holds up and remains one of the best and riskiest films in Spielberg’s impressive filmography.
Munich is available for rent or purchase Prime Video.