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January 09, 2006
MUNICH THE MOVIE
I'm getting some flack by my critics who argue Munich is entertaining and makes a number of interesting juxtapositions between the warring oppositions. They further argue the acting is good, the special effects are good and the action is fast and hard hitting. My two thumbs down is too harsh. Well, maybe, but read on.
Spielberg's message is where I have the problem and I said so from the begining. It is woven throughout most of the last half of the movie. His message says that war is hell, that one man's terrorist is another man's hero, that desperation makes for desperate acts, killing is evil, all truisms, except for the last one. Killing and murder are on two different levels. In WWII we killed in order to stop the murders, this is moral point radical liberals still don't get and it shows up in this movie.
I strongly disagree with Spielberg when he asserts Israel was not morally justified to do what it did in response to the terrorism of the 72 Olympics. I say there was no moral parity between the cause and effect and I resented Spielberg's attempt to teach the audience his liberal ideology. If I wanted that, I could go back to Chico State. No, I just wanted to see a real life event made into an accurate movie without the spin.
In 1972-73, Israel did assassinate leaders of the PLO and for a time the world was a safer place. The assassinations were not meant to be a long term solution, rather a response to an evil act, cause and effect. A line from the movies goes something like this, Avner (the lead hitman) says, "When we kill them, another just replaces him! What are we doing, what good does it do?" The Mossad controller says calmly, "Why do we cut our fingernails?" Then he goes on to explain, Israel must fight back because we are sending a message, "You don't attack Israel without paying a dear price."
On a grander scale back in the cold war days, we called this principle "detente." Detente worked because the stakes were high. I suspect if the cost of terrorism was high enough, there would be no terrorism. However, very small, very limited responses to terrorism eventually only forms a cycle of reoccurring events. So, to that extent Spielberg and I do share some common ground here.
I'll quantify my criticism to Spielberg's message and say his hand wringing message still gets a 4 in my opinion, the movie action and acting was good, I'll give it a 7. How's that for fair? Shalom
Posted by Post Scripts at January 9, 2006 08:04 AM