Munich: A Descent into Moral Ambiguity

Steven Spielberg is growing up. The director’s earlier films viewed extraterrestrials and uncomplicated heroes, such as Indiana Jones, with the wonder of a young child. His mature historical work, Schindler’s List (1993) and Amistad (1997), perceived the world as a struggle between good and evil. In his latest film Munich, the filmmaker demonstrates a far more sophisticated appreciation for the role played by ambiguity and paradox in historical causation. Similar to the moral certainty of the George W. Bush refrain, “You are either with us or the terrorists,” Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) more eloquently states, “Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.” Spielberg raises serious questions regarding Meir’s philosophical justification for revenge and retribution.

Munich begins with the kidnapping and death of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. The film focuses upon the formation of a top-secret unofficial Israeli team assembled to assassinate eleven leaders of the Black September Movement deemed responsible for planning the Munich attack. Leadership of the unit is assigned to young Avner (Eric Bana), a former body guard to the prime minister and the son of an Israeli hero. Although he and his wife (Ayelet Zurer) are expecting a baby, Avner displays a sense of duty and accepts this assignment which separates him from his family. Avner and his team then proceed to locate and eliminate their targets in a bloodbath which ranges though the major capitals of Europe. The story is loosely based upon the book Vengeance by George Jonas, but the question of historical accuracy certainly plays second fiddle to the larger issue of whether Avner is making the proper moral choice.

Munich is a political thriller, psychological study of Avner, and philosophical pondering of the troubled times in which we live. Fans of John Le Carre will love the complicated political maneuvering of Avner, his handler Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), and information sources Louis (Mathieu Amalric) and his Papa (Michael Lonsdale). The plot details are almost as confusing as the story line for Syriana, although there are some nice suspense moments in the Hitchcock tradition concerning a young girl answering his father’s telephone in which explosives are planted.

The story’s center is Avner, who becomes increasingly disillusioned with his activities, speculating whether retaliatory violence has brought any security for his nation or family, whom he relocates to Brooklyn. The young Israeli’s desire for a peaceful domestic life is conveyed in his affinity for cooking and a large orderly kitchen. But his actions have only brought disorder to his world. A distraught and paranoid Avner ripping his room apart in search of a planted bomb is reminiscent of Gene Hackman in The Conversation (1974) destroying his apartment while seeking to uncover a surveillance camera. Near the end of the film, Avner tells Ephraim, “There’s no peace at the end of this.”

Of course, this quotation leads to contemporary parallels with the American military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. And just in case viewers fail to make the connection, the film’s final scene is a conversation between Avner and Ephraim with the World Trade Center towers in the background. Spielberg clearly wants his audience to ponder the morality of the so-called war on terror. Munich suggests that the Americans and Israelis have abandoned the high ground through a violent response to terrorism. Spielberg appears to take a neutral stance between the Israelis and Palestinians, but the director fails to really examine any motivation for the assault in Munich. Some believe that investigating the root causes of terrorism legitimizes political violence. But how are we to ever have a more peaceful world if we do not ask these questions? While recognizing a world awash in ambiguity, the story is still told from the Israeli rather than Palestinian perspective. Avner finds many of the Arab and Palestinians he encounters to be quite personable, but they seem to lack the qualms about killing and collateral damage expressed by the Israeli assassination team. On the other hand, retaliatory air strikes by Israel against Palestinian camps following Munich made no such distinctions between civilians and combatants.

In addition, Spielberg would have us believe that Munich in 1972 and 9/11 in 2001 marked major turning points for Israeli and American foreign policy. However, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank dates back to 1967, and those who believe America was innocent before the tragedy of 9/11 would do well to remember the Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam and the torture techniques taught at the School of the Americas and employed in behalf of U. S. interests in Latin America during the Cold War.