Movie Review

Directed by Stephen Spielberg, starring: Eric Bana (Avner), Ciaran Hines (Carl), Daniel Craig (Steve), Mathieu Kassovitz (Robert), 120 minutes, 2005.

Much praised and criticized, Spielberg gives us this morally ambiguous and provocative tale based on the kidnapping and murder of eleven athletes and coaches from the 1972 Israeli Olympic team and the subsequent hunt for the Palestinian assassins (militants?, terrorists?, freedom fighters?). The beginning is interlaced with archival video footage of the crisis. Avner, a former body guard for President Golda Meir and a Mossad agent is recruited to gather a covert assassination team that will crisscross Europe for the next several years hunting down the perpetrators. Just as M.A.S.H. was not about Korea but was a simile for Viet Nam, Munich is a simile for our post 9/11 world. Meir's words "This changes everything" echo similar language from the White House.

Avner also solicits -at considerable financial expense- the help of the enigmatic Louis (Mathieu Almaric) who supplies the team with intelligence regarding their targets as well as supplying safe houses around Europe. We never really know whether Louis and his boss "Papa" (Michael Lonsdale) are complicit with Mossad, are motivated by politics or are simply in it to profit from the desire for revenge. On one occasion, Avner and his team end up being lodged in a safe house with a group of Palestinians by mistake (or maybe not). This provides Spielberg with the literary device to present the "Israeli" and "Palestinian" viewpoint. Avner and Ali talk through the night. "You don't know what it is like not to have a home", says Ali. To which Avner asks if he really misses his father's olive trees. Avner's own relationship to Israel is ambiguous and this is symbolized by his moving his pregnant wife to New York. In the final shot of the movie with the twin towers in the background Avner invites his Mossad contact home to "break bread with him". He refuses and the movie ends with the ambiguity of home and exile, violence and morality.

But this theme has long been established. By midpoint Avner has lost his way; has lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong, necessity from needless action. Plagued by guilt and paranoia, Avner avenges the murder of team mate Carl. This precipitates the departure of bomb maker Robert who is also plagued with guilt and who tells Avner "We are Jews. We are supposed to be righteous". Religion enters the moral discourse when Robert invokes his status as a Jew to morally oppose their actions.

This is an action/ espionage film with plenty of violence but worth pondering are themes of the status of religion and morality in relation to the law. Golda Meir tells Avner that violence is necessary to uphold the law. Over time, Avner and his crew have begun to act in a state of exception and Avner wonders whether he is motivated by revenge, the defense of his nation or some higher moral law. Is the law being violated or upheld? There is a palpable tension throughout the movie between law and violence, home and Diaspora, guilt and redemption, nation and disenchantment, revenge and righteousness.

While there are many ambiguities at play in the movie (For Christians there is a constant resonance with Maundy Thursday/ Garden of Gethsemane) Spielberg takes pains to note that violence begets violence and that peaceful resolution is always a moral option. Still, we need to ponder whether our society is one whose nature is disposed to war. Are there knights of faith among us always ready to suspend the ethical for the necessity of taking ruthless action?