Munich

'Munich is something to munch on'

Munich is one of those movies that was widely acknowledged last year as being nominated for best picture as a honor to its director Steven Spielberg without any real expectation of winning. It was lauded before it came out as being a great work since it was the melding of Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner, the mastermind behind the play Angels in America. The movie was released, considered okay, but not amazing as everyone had hoped for it to be. What happened? The cast included several well known actors including Geoffrey Rush and Eric Bana plays the main character. In fact, the current Bond, Daniel Craig, had a big part in the film. Many articles and critics focused on the historical accuracy of the story itself as being flawed and therefore producing a flawed movie. Some decided to focus more on the fact that the movie feels too heavily prejudiced in favor of Israel. Since I have little knowledge of the actual events upon which the film is based, hopefully my review will be different in explaining the reasons for its failure to capture audiences and critics, although I am of the belief that America supports Israel a little too often in the Middle East.

Most of the history upon which the film is based comes from the events surrounding the hijacking and execution of the Israeli Olympics sports team by an Islamic group of radicals in the film known as Black September. After the deaths of the athletes, the Israeli government gathers several groups of Israeli nationalist Jews together to form their own terrorist cells and to supposedly attack back and kill the terrorists responsible for the deaths of the Israeli athletes. The film follows one of these cells lead by Eric Bana’s character. Speaking of poor Eric Bana, the man shows such promise in films and then his films get panned. His character in Troy was great, but the rest of the movie was badly handled. Hulk failed as a consequence of the struggle between the director Ang Lee and the studio execs creating an opaque and cloudy vision of mish-mashed ideas. So what was wrong with the film this time for Eric Bana? Well…he is. Yes, he finally doesn’t seem to live up to the part he was chosen for. He shows a lot of range but why can he not pan out? This could be because of the way in which the film was created. Tony Kushner is primarily a playwright and this was his first screenplay. He treated the screenplay as he would treat a play by being there for the creation and editing his script as he came up with new ideas and tried to sculpt the vision to how things were going. Tried to make the characters belong more to the actors and help them. However, with the constant editing and rewriting on the set, this causes possible confusion for the director Spielberg who has never directed a play, and for the actors in terms of not knowing the arc of the overall story or characters necessarily. However, a leading man should be used to this and it doesn’t seem to affect most of the other actors. In fact Daniel Craig comes off better than Eric Bana. Geoffrey Rush does an excellent job as well. In the end, I guess Eric Bana simply wasn’t ready for this role. Most of the movie he comes across as too silent and moody and he doesn’t let the audience in far enough to see his personal conflict as much as he ought.

Other problems...well, Spielberg? If you want to see the growth of a director, just look at Spielberg’s career and be awed. He went from doing light entertainment and kids films to adult war films such as Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List. The problem is that he has never really tried to make a message film. Well, that is arguable, but for the most part he claims to only want to tell great stories, which may or may not have a message. In this case he has said that he wanted to make a comment about a very real and debilitating conflict which is causing so much pain. Where he succeeds is he doesn’t focus explicitly on the Israel versus Islam hatred. He makes it a story about a man and his group of revenge killers for the national tragedy. He also doesn’t let Israel get off the hook. It would be easy to claim that Spielberg is pro-Israel however, the Israeli government comes off looking bad as do most of the radicals. By the end, the conflict appears to be useless and all for the sake of revenge on both sides. The real problem is that the film spreads itself too thin and the pacing needs work. The film tries to cover too much from recreating the assassination of the Israeli sports team, to portraying and building the struggle and empathy for the main character, to the building of the friendship between Eric Bana and his friends. The pacing goes too slowly in some spots where I think Spielberg is trying to develop the silent conflict of Bana’s character and it feels forced and slow. It is easy to be distracted while watching the film and find yourself doing something else when you shouldn’t be. Another interesting thing is that Spielberg noted that this movie is as close to directing a play as he will ever get. Well, for a first attempt its not bad, but he needed to devote more time to developing the relationships through dialogue.
Conclusion:
Munich is a good film but it suffers from being too spread out. The relationships between characters and their motivations are murky at best. Also, Eric Bana does not seem to put in too much of a performance. However, Spielberg puts in a good first attempt with good cinematography, great action scenes, and the re-enactment of the kidnapping of the Israeli sports team is exquisite. Spielberg has shown that he is more interested these days in making adult entertainment masterpieces and I feel that this film is an excellent attempt at this ideal. Hopefully this won’t be the last time Kushner and Spielberg collaborate because I feel that next time a lot of the problems that plagued this movie will not exist and they will learn to emphasize each other’s assets better to create a true great masterpiece that will rival the likes of Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and even Schindler’s List.

3.75 out 5

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