It seems almost petty to lament the way Brokeback Mountain is hauling in awards, because I really did like it despite some problems, and furthermore because it’s sure better than anything that was nominated for awards last year. Of course, I thought last year was a very weak year of contenders – Million Dollar Baby, which won best picture, was both morally repugnant and, worse, a bad movie and Sideways, which was sort of the critical darling of the year, was only funny about twice. But what an abundance of riches this year. I don’t care if the numbers are down or if it’s Mel Gibson’s fault or anything, I really just want to see good, interesting movies – in that respect I think 2005 was as good as any year in recent memory.
That’s a point I could really expand on, but I really only mean to explain that I’m not trying to bad talk Brokeback Mountain when I say I don’t think it’s the best movie of the year. It’s just that this year offered a lot of really great movies, among them Munich, which is probably the best film I’ve seen this decade.
For me, a great movie has to be about something larger than itself. Great movies are not always my “favorite” movies – in the years to come I’m sure to watch The 40-Year-Old Virgin more often than “Munich.” But I’ll probably think about Munich more.
The first way it exceeds is that, pure and simple, it’s a great movie. It’s a thriller by Steven Spielberg. So it’s good even if you pay no attention to the subtext of the story, the politics, the many questions the movie asks. But it’s that subtext that makes this something beyond Minority Report or War of the Worlds – it’s the subtext that makes it great.
It’s easy, especially for those of us who are roughly my age, to dismiss the movie as historical, because it concerns events that happened before our lifetime. What matters in the movie, and what I think Spielberg did a very good job of reminding us, is what history teachers so often fail to remind their students of: Why this is relevant. On the surface this is a revenge movie about something that happened in Europe in the 1970s between Israelis and Palestinians. It’s easy to feel distant from even today’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict if you’re living in the United States. But of course it matters. Even if you are completely unfeeling to the troubles of others, even if you somehow imagine that we do not now live in a global community, even then you must remember that the very existence of Israel (and America’s good relations with the country) is part of what fuels so much of the hatred felt for us by those who wish us harm. So it does matter. We should ask ourselves why they are fighting and what we can do to stop it. And part of helping to stop it is knowing historically why they’re still fighting.
In one of Munich’s best scenes there is a conversation that brilliantly lays out each side’s case, and yet refuses to take a stand. But it begins to make clear a terrible truth: Both are right, in their way. Both, in their way, are wrong. The film has been beaten up pretty badly by those who say it is overly sympathetic to Palestinians and by those who say it’s overly sympathetic to Israel – of course, that such vehement criticism is raining down from both sides is a testament, I think, to the fairness and truth of the film.
But Munich isn’t just about telling us how we got here in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It speaks volumes about the very nature of terrorism in the world today, and it’s this that has recently kept the film most in my mind. Munich shows us a mid 1970s world that I know existed but still can hardly find credible. In this world, terrorism is an almost legitimate tactic. Not because anyone thinks fondly of it, but because it works. Terrorists take hostages to gain the release of prisoners. The hostages die and some of the hostage takers are captured but then another group of terrorists hijacks a plane and demand the release of those captured hostage-takers. And it works. It’s a stunning thing, to see governments negotiate (which is to say cave in) to terrorists.
Of course, this issue is still around. It’s happening in Iraq all the time, it’s why we still don’t know if this young woman is dead or alive. But it’s not that common worldwide anymore because it doesn’t work very often. Most governments now refuse to negotiate with terrorists. And that’s a horrifying thing, because it can mean innocent American citizens being executed live on TV. In the case of the first part of this year’s 24, terrorists took an airport terminal hostage. Wouldn’t it be unspeakably horrible to watch as the terrorists slaughtered people because they could not extort whatever it is they wanted from the President? Wouldn’t it be terrible to be the President, watching those people die? But it has to go that way, because caving not only rewards bad behavior but also encourages more of it. So Munich is a stomach-turning lesson about why we don’t negotiate with terrorists, no matter the cost.
But the film is much more than a lesson about how we came to be here. It is also a question: How do we stop this? The movie is not about the Munich massacre, after all, it’s about a team of Israelis sent to kill those who planned the Munich massacre. It’s a revenge mission, and a covert one, but also a noble one. I dislike revenge and violence on principle, but I was rooting for Eric Bana and his team nonetheless. And yet, as the movie goes on, we in the audience start to question the worthiness of what the Israelis are doing as much as the characters themselves begin to doubt. We start to see questions like: Is it acceptable for an innocent person to die in an attack that also kills a bad guy? How many innocent people?
And more questions about the justness of their cause. We can of course understand why Israel feels it has been attacked by and why they seek revenge. But what about when the Palestinians begin to seek revenge on the Israelis? At some point you have to ask yourself: Where did all this actually start? At Munich? Or sometime earlier? So long as each side remains assured of it’s moral superiority then greater and more terrible acts of violence are necessary. And, justifiably, we begin to wonder: How does this stop?
There’s no answer. Spielberg and writer Tony Kushner aren’t naïve enough to cop out with any peace rhetoric at the end. Eric Bana, though alive, is not at all sure he will be able to stay that way. And what a life he has – he can’t even have sex with his wife without images of violence playing through his head. How does this end? It doesn’t. “There is no peace at the end of this,” a character says.
And then, as if to prove the point, the shot pulls back and we find ourselves looking at the skyline of Manhattan in the 1970s and the credits come up and roll over two very recognizable buildings that no longer stand there. It’s almost subtle. I have read reviews from people who seemed not to notice it at all. But I couldn’t stop staring at those two towers, literally couldn’t look away. I’m a smart person and I think rather often about the darker realities of our world, the wars we’re fighting, and all that. And yet while the movie played I hadn’t much thought about America, except to the extent that America was a part of the story. I hadn’t much thought about our own war on terrorism. I hadn’t much thought about the World Trade Center. But there at the end I finally understood.
A work of art like a book or a movie very often isn’t so much about what it’s title implies or what it seems at the beginning – it’s the last image that the writer wants to stay in your head. So it is with Munich. Yes, it’s about Munich. Yes, it’s about Israel and Palestine. But what I’ll always remember most is the way, at the very end, Spielberg reminded me it’s also a movie about today, about America, about those two towers that no longer rise above the skyline.
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