Munich

I really wanted Munich to win Best Picture in '06, but figured it stood no chance against Brokeback Mountain.

Little did I know....

The last shot of this film stayed with me after I saw it in the theaters in 2005: Avner, dejected and lost, in the playground with the New York City skyline (complete with the World Trade Center) in the background. It's a fantastic film but it also drains you and leaves you hanging just like the main character in the end.

I only saw this movie in the theatre, and I really need to watch it again. I remember it being quite great, and then holding out for a kickass DVD, which never came. It's one of Spielberg's best, in my hazy opinion.

A decent edition did come out, but was hard as fuck to find. It was a annoying practice on the part of universal. I got one by unhappy chance.

I was discussing this film the other day with a friend. Mind you, he has seen a lot of films, but is completely off as to what is good or not. I said that this was the best spielberg film of 2005, but he said it was war of the worlds that was not only his best of 2005, but from his whole ouevre. I just stated that war of the worlds was a copout with the usual happy ending form spielberg.
He was pissed.

I like how this movie is even handed about the holy land troubles and is realistic about the method in which agents operate.

"Don't fuck with the Jews."

Love this movie. I've been thinking about it a lot recently, and picked up the DVD a few weeks back. Haven't yet found the time to watch it. One scene, maybe the most crucial scene in the movie, is Daniel Craig and the Muslim guy fighting over what to listen to on the radio, before finding a common ground with soul music. Love it. That's all I got.

I have a friend who watched this and then saw Sword of Gideon, and he insists Gideon is the better film. I haven't seen Gideon, but Munich just overwhelms you with the senselessness of it all -- the death of the athletes, the men Avner's team kills, the members of the team that are killed, it's all for nothing. It doesn't accomplish anything. The Palestinians are still fighting for a homeland, Jews and Palestinians are still fighting over it, and people on both sides are dying and creating martyrs for the next generation.

I also love the 70s vibe Spielberg gives this, not just evoking the period but the films of the time too.

I think Spielberg, though, does a wonderful job of playing with the audience's emotions when it comes to the violence. The first third of the movie, if I remember correctly, plays like a very well done thriller/revenge movie. He shows the explicitness of the violence against Isreal so that you're rooting for the Israelis, in the words of Seth Rogen, to be "capping motherfuckers." Once around the time the bomb goes bad and the arm is hanging from the ceiling fan, you start to realize that he's drawn you into this lust for revenge, then showing you what really happens. Then, of course, there's the revenge for Carl, which is fucking brutal. Gah. Interesting that this and History of Violence came out in the same year.

It's amazing that it began filming in July 2005 and was released that November. Spielberg is a master.

I thought MUNICH was a pretty well-made movie. I did think that the sex/violence montage sequence didn't work like Spielberg expected, but otherwise....really great movie.

Probably even his best since SCHINDLER'S LIST.

MUNICH (2005) - ****1/2

"Steven, when will you complete your Dead Jews Trilogy?" - Jon Stewart

Agreed.

Yeah well, I figured since someone bitched that my system doesn't "allow" good movies, that I thought very highly of MUNICH...I sorta wanted to make a point of it.

Plus, I'm lazy. That fleshed-out review may or may not ever happen.

I have the same feeling on it. My explanation for the reaction you and I share? Two of them. The first is that the camera is almost like a third person in the room. This person is remorse-less, and happens to take a good view of the deed (good framing). When the man under the door is shot with the Uzi the person does not flinch or even blink. In fact, one of my friends half expected some sort of edit when they found him under the door, but it never came. This little bit in Munich is very frank, and such frankness hits us hard. Its kind of like the voyeurism seen in other cinema, but also different.

The second has to do with the position that the man is in at the moment. Now as animals that have a social instinct, we might think that when someone is hurt or vulnerable they will be taken care of or at least be spared further harm. Such a person might also have our sympathies. Many are merciful like that. The fact that this man was dazed and slightly may have put it in the mind that he needed help or should be left alone, either way he at least had some sympathy from us, even if he was in cahoots with black september. That such a person was killed in a moment of vulnerability instaed of being spared/helped may have felt strange to those with symathetic feelings. Or just a bit fucked up.

On the flip side, I know a guy on youtube who thought that the man being shot while still dazed was hilarious.

So yeah, what do I know?

Agreed on this analysis, as it was meant to go against the gung-ho attitude post-9-11. Spielberg does this by portraying the arabs not as cave-dwelling, bearded, sub-humans, but as real men with families and the like. Men, while being involved in terrorism, that one could engage in conversation with.

I hate being this shallow but the sex scene between Bana's Avner and his wife, intercut with Avner's impressions of the hostage massacre, really derails MUNICH for me. It's one of those scenes that's so misjudged and poorly presented that it taints the whole movie. I know what Spielberg was trying to achieve, and what he was attempting to say is valid within the context of the story, but it's just so damn jarring.

It's too bad because MUNICH otherwise contains scenes and sequences among Spielberg's best. The team's revenge for Carl's death is unforgettable.

Plus: Ayelet Zurer. I find her utterly alluring. Her very presence makes buying a ticket to VANTAGE POINT worthwhile.

I found this thread while I was looking for something else, and it's funny because Soul Ahn Ice and I were just recently talking about the love we have for this film, and how baffled we are about its relatively ambivalent reception.

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said, but I will say that I prefer this to SCHINDLER'S LIST. I've felt that way since I first saw it but only recently did I put my finger on why: In SCHINDLER'S LIST the moral ground is definite. Schindler the man is wonderfully complex, but never at any point would you question why he would save the Jews. It's unequivocally clear what the evil is. In MUNICH the moral waters are unequivocally murky, and the point of the movie is to discuss what the evil is, if it can even be found. In that way I think it's a more challenging film, and from a storytelling standpoint I think it's riskier.

This is exactly why I prefer Munich (though Schindler's List is no push over).

I agree with most of the points made. Gripping movie. As mentioned above, the sex/violence montage doesn;t really work, and the movie is a bit too long.

That's just nitpicking though. Overall an amazing movie.

I was kind of caught by how sound was used in this film. I loved the way the guns sounded, and particularly when the phone bomb explodes and blows out the windows I didn't think I'd ever heard anything like it.

This film is fantastic, there's really very little denying it. I think the sex scene is a fumble as many others have, in fact I think the flashbacks in general are just poorly done. They're really the only downside to this movie, and thankfully they're enough to ignore.

I was blown away when Daniel Craig started walking around in this movie, and he was actually pretty good. The surprise although was Eric Bana. I loath the man for the most part (No I haven't seen Chopper yet, I'm going to though I promise) but he was fantastic in this.

I really agree with this. A director's cut/special edition of this film would just excise that scene, or contain a re-shot version of it, and leave everything else in tact. Its a terrible, terrible scene in an otherwise excellent film. I'm always surprised at how much I admire this film when I'm watching it, becuase it left a bad taste first time around. Then that scene happens and there's that bad taste again. Real shame.

Otherwise though, damn fine film. Wish we saw more of this Spielberg.

Somehow I ended up going to see Munich on New Years Eve. It really wasn't the happiest New years after that. What I really couldn't believe is how packed the theatre was. I was holding a couple of seats for a friend and his girlfriend but I was forced to give them up. I had no idea that so many people went to the movies on New Years.

By the way I did like Munich. It was a very draining experience from what I remember. I've only seen bits of it since seeing it in the theatre so I would like to sit down and watch the whole thing again to see if that feeling is still there.

I saw Sword of Gideon years ago when it premiered on HBO. It was an OK action movie (Also featured a hot Marlboro smoking assassin chick) and little more. I was puzzled to hear Spielberg intended to remake a serviceable but bland movie. Maybe he read John Huston’s remark that Hollywood should remake bad movies until they get them right?

Like several posters above, I too think Munich is a near masterpiece, ruined by the bloated runtime and that horrible sex scene near the end. It was really so over the top and loopy it just knocked me right out of the movie. There was a similar scene in War of Worlds: the Dakota Fanning character goes down to the river to piss, and sees a dead human corpse float by. She is suitably horrified. Suddenly a whole bunch of dead human corpses floats by, and when that happened the audience I was with started laughing their asses off. Not what Spielberg had in mind I’d wager.

I find it frustrating that as Spielberg matures as a filmmaker he gets sloppier, and either refuses to edit his films properly, or believes that his narratives must reflect the moral murkiness of the subjects he chooses.

I think this is one of the best films of the decade. It's most certainly a movie I can put on anytime, anywhere, and enjoy the heck out of it. For one thing, it's a superb thriller, filled with noir and Hitchcock influences, yet never settling for mere homage. Spielberg uses these moods to tell the story. And the action scenes are some of the best in the whole decade. The violence is well-done and imaginative and realistic.

For another thing, it's a damned smart script, starting out as a mossad thriller, and then eventually becoming a moral quandary. And I don't think it's overlong at all. Like ZODIAC, it uses its length to convey the weight of years, and that a simple "kill the bad guys" mission has complicated into something far more gray. Not that it's a political-science thesis paper, but that it examines the Israel-Palestine, post 9/11 so nicely.

Individually, there are so many excellent scenes:
- The above mentioned Daniel Craig-Muslim (sorry, don't know the specific group title) fight over the radio.
- The little girl almost blown to pieces by answering a telephone call, as well as every kill scene in the movie.
- The mini-GODFATHER sequence, ending with "...but you're not family."
- The "what, it wasn't easy for me to say that," scene in the hospital.

Obviously, all the actors here are excellent. Eric Bana's Avner will probably be overshadowed by Matt Damon's Bourne in the long-run, but Avner is a good guy trapped in a worsening moral crisis. THE GREEN ZONE definitely has its work cut out for itself.

The ending sex/Munich scene is still ridiculous, but I agree with David Lynch: Every great film has at least one embarrassing moment. As a whole, this ill-informed scene does nothing to ruin the movie. If nothing else, that final shot, with the Twin Towers, is superb, and easily makes a touchdown after that fumble.

What's so ridiculous about the sex scene?

Its just a heavy-handed scene - with the muzzle flashes bouncing of Bana's gurning face - in such an otherwise well-judged film. I totally get it and I get what Spielberg did it for. I just think he could have done it better, considering how he gets other ideas across in the film.

Don't get me wrong, its a helluva film, one of his best and easily his best of the past decade. But it would be damn near perfect, of not for that scene..

Unfortunately, that particular scene earned some pretty hearty laughs in our movie theater. It works for me, but I always remember the laughter from the theater whenever I watch that moment and it continues to take me out of the film.

Love the movie, though. I'll 100% agree that it's one of Spielberg's best films

I think that scene is supposed to be deliberately jarring and unlike anything else in the film. It's Bana's realization that everything he's done, all this horrible violence at the end of which he thought awaited the comfort and sanity of home, amounted to nothing. The hostages are still dead, their deaths will still haunt him (and Israel), and even the most intimate moments with his wife are tainted by it. He's desperately trying to recapture something that will never be captured again.

Um, the movie was not even handed and realistic. Its based of a book that is apparently largely a work of fiction. The agents involved were not conflicted about killing. Israel targets women and children as a matter of policy called collective punishment, you really think they would care about killing the worst kind of terrorists? And these agents killed innocent people in their pursuit, like killing a waitor in front of his pregnant wife, this could've been an example of the agents dealing with genuine self doubt, but of course this was not shown in the film. A very well made film, but its also a bunch of bullshit.

Credit has to also be given to Spielberg for not going with a "Let's put our differences aside for one night and have diner with your family" ending.

I'm sure that's the point. It's just sort of a graceless execution, mostly due to how "Hollywood" the sex scene looks - very visually overblown with Bana and Zurer striking these dramatic poses in what I remember as slo-mo (it's been a while, so I can't recall whether it actually was, but it sure felt like it). It doesn't convey the intimacy or naturalism needed to pull off what you describe.

It may have been an attempt at establishing incongruity (and, indeed, this would make sense given the rest of the film), but because of the stylized nature of the scene, it instead reads like some bizarre, out-of-nowhere conflation of sex and violence in the moment.

Yeah, if this movie had been "realistic" they would have blown the little girl up and then claimed she was a gun smuggling suicide bomber harboring terrorists in her basement. And then the US gives them a billion dollars.

I share your puzzlement over the lack of recognition this film has received since its release, and the above quote is exactly why. That ambiguity is absolutely essential given the nature of the issues the film addresses, and in keeping the waters murky I think Spielberg made a strong attempt at changing dialog surrounding the film's topics. (Though since people tend to view terrorism and terrorists in pretty black and white terms, it maybe isn't too surprising that Munich never really got a whole lot of attention in its release, and why people haven't gone back to it even today.)

And yeah, this for sure. That final exchange at the end is so brief and frank and yet it's haunting in its own fashion.

Exactly right. Like I said, I get what Spielberg was going for, but his method pulls me out of the film due to it being so out of place with what as gone before. Its not the concept that ruins it, its the execution, as Dave said.

I saw the film once in theaters and on video. The sex scene was in slow-motion. It was definitely jarring.

As taken from the Minority Report thread...

Apologies, I'll just reprint Ali and my quotes that led to my last response...

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...and now my response to Ali...

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Wow. Okay....


Well since the film is structured around the notion that even justified revenge achieves nothing but the destruction of the soul, the film certainly starts off with gusto, being shot almost like a glorious 'don't fuck with the jews' action film. The 'dabs of regret and guilt' only start to come after... once Avner starts to see the Palastinians he's killing NOT as cyphers or indeed monsters, but men and women like himself. The regret and guilt comes with empathy. It's also at this time that the film becomes darker, murkier and much less action oriented than its first half or so. This is very structurally deliberate on Spielbergs part, he's trying to make the audience complicit in enjoying the early violence in the film, in revelling in the revenge, thus as the film does become more morally ambiguous and complex, that complicity and Avners emotional journey becomes ours.

There are plenty of times when the Palastinians are painted with more depth than you're giving Spielberg credit for here, not least of which the night spent in the safe house, or Avners moment on the balcony in the hotel just before his bomb explodes next door. There are all sorts of moments where Palastinians are humanised so I honestly don't get where your point is coming from.

No, it was essentially Spielbergs 'plea for peace', to boil it down to its most basic theme it was the old 'an eye for an eye makes us both blind'.

See my point above, the film is very deliberately structured to get the audience viscerally involved and onside with the violence in the films first half, so that by the second half, we feel as dirty as Avner does, we can understand why he has essentially become dead inside to a degree. Once we're at the point of him slowly and methodically murdering the female assassin on the house boat, we're meant to feel a little dirty and disgusted not just by the act, but by ourselves for having been so caught up with the idea of righteous revenge that the film involved us in at its start.

I don't think they're faults, I just think that you're looking for a more traditional Steven Spielberg film out of Munich than it is, this is much more like a film from the 70's. It's Spielberg asking nasty big questions and for once refusing to give any answers. It's trying to take us down the road of a man losing his soul for the sake of supposed righteous revenge and essentially giving us the moral that it achieves nothing but more death, destruction and pain in a never ending cycle. It is without a doubt the most powerful, complex and in many ways brilliant film Spielberg has ever made.

Anyway, those are my muddled thoughts on the topic - it's been a lot of years since I've seen the film, something I've been meaning to remedy for a long time and writing this may have inspired me to fix that this weekend, but I don't actually mind using the term masterpiece in regards to it.

I'll take a hundred shitty disappointing cop-out endings to your War Of The Worlds or Minroty Reports if it gets me just one Munich.

This is where you and I have to diverge. The movie starts off as a "don't fuck with the jews" action movie and then attempts to be morally complex WITHOUT showing us why it should be. You see Eric Bana get morally turned out at what he does, but what has Speilberg shown us? A massacre of Israelis at the hand of Palestinian terrorists and then the hunting down (albeit in a brutal manner) of people affiliated with that terrorist group. The only thing cluing us in that this isn't a typical revenge movie is somber music and Eric Bana sadface. If we are going to care about the people that our heroes are killing, shouldn't we know more about them? Like why they would do such an unspeakable action, or why they would be so dead set against the Israelis. Which brings me to the next point...


Yes there was the scene where Israelis and Palestinians can agree they like soul music or the fact that Palestinians can actually birth kids, but come on. For us to empathize (which is different than sympathy because we're only seeing from their vantage point and not agreeing with their actions) with the Palestinians we have to know why they're doing what they did. More depth was needed, more background, and more intelligence on the issue and the real moral gray that is emitted from it.


I suppose, but as far as themes go it's a pretty simplistic and well-trodden one.


No, what I was looking for a movie that was much less traditionally Spielbergian (that a word)? A movie that had something more intelligent and definitive to say on the issue. You mentioned "70s" movies. Well, maybe that's why this movie feels so off. I'm not saying MUNICH is a bad movie, or a mediocre, or not even a good movie. I'm just saying that it doesn't have the thematic impact or the intellectual heights of the 70's era paranoid thrillers it's seeking to emulate (or even a modern day espionage thriller like SYRIANA).

Narrative-wise MUNICH is very much Avner's journey as Jew from vengeance to self-loathing, so I don't know why you need to see expository scenes detailing Palestinian motivation and so on. Avner isn't supposed to suddenly crave an understanding of his enemy or grow to like him - he is just confronted with the basic ugliness and evil of killing another human being for no good reason. He's never going to be convinced of the just nature of the Palestinians' cause, nor is he supposed to be, nor is the viewer supposed to give a damn which side has the moral high ground. The descent into paranoia and self-hatred is driven by emotion rather than any logical exploration of the "rightness" of their crusade.

It's not that we need to be convinced of the Palestinian cause, but my point there was to say that there needs to be some sort of justification or something changing this movie from righteous kill mode. And it sure as hell isn't the people they're killing, who're basically cardboard structures.

Sharing a laugh with a guy you're about to kill could certainly be enough in the real world to plant seeds of doubt. I think you're looking for more conventional "thriller" tropes in what's mainly a drama.

But they're more or less cardboard structures to Avner, which is sort of the point.

Exactly. When you dehumanise someone to the point that you'll willingly kill them in cold blood in the name of an abstract form of revenge, a shared smile or even simple recogniton of each other could be enough to crack that resolve. Avner acts like a real human being, not a plot device or stock thriller character.

It looks like a case of "The movie Ali expected/wanted it to be" versus "what Spielberg offered."

And what Spielberg offered was his one of his best movie ever. I came into this movie expecting to hate it as another "Jews are victims" movie. I really tried to hate it, find an angle to work with but it's nearly flawless.

The problem with putting too much stock in the thriller and/or "issue" elements of the movie is that it tends to paint the narrative with the brush of omniscience when really the story is, like you said, Avner's. That's why I like the SCHINDLER comparison so much. Together the two films are symmetrical in a way. In SCHINDLER he used a similar device, but the moral issue was perfectly clear. So Schindler began with morally ambivalent footing and eventually found his way to an absolute good. Avner, on the other hand, begins with what he feels (or is told) is the absolute good, but finds himself descending into a morass of ambiguity.

I don't know how anybody could get to that last exchange between Bana and Geoffrey Rush and come off thinking that anyone's righteous in this film.

I somewhat disagree with the Schindler's List comparison. That film is about going from soullessness to righteousness. Munich's the return trip.

I'd agree, which is why I made the symmetry argument.

Nice analogy. It might be a stretch, but there's also the last hurrah of each movie - the parade past Schindler's grave, and the shot of the Two Towers. Each ends their respective film by highlighting the previously underplayed contemporary context.