Munich (2005, Steven Spielberg)
I’m going to try and combine my thoughts on Munich with a few points for discussion to get you all warmed up. If you've not seen the film and would like to, don't read on if you're bothered about plot spoilers as I'm assuming everyone taking part has seen the movie in it's entirety.
What were your thoughts on the casting?
I think Bana’s crew was well cast - the firebrand (Daniel Craig), the veteran (Ciaran Hinds), the nervous one (Mathieu Kassovitz) and the quiet one (Hanns Zischler). There were certainly colourful enough to offset Bana’s brooding earnestness.
What were your thoughts on the direction? Was it suitably Spielbergian or was it refreshingly free from his signature touches?
Restrained and downbeat (from the point of view that this is a Spielberg film) for me, but overlong. Spielberg is a director totally comfortable with a variety of genres and long-time collaborator Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography gave a nicely washed-out Cold War feel.
Did Spielberg try to overtly illicit your sympathies towards the plight of Israel in 1972 or did you think he tried to be as even-handed as possible?
As a product from the most prominent Jewish filmmaker in the industry, Munich was bound to stand on one side of the line but I think Spielberg at least tried to show both points of view, especially in the scene in the Greek safe house where Bana and his men encounter an almost identical group of PLO members. The dialogue between Avner and his Muslim counterpart is perhaps a bit mawkish for my taste but I understand why it was there.
Geoffrey Rush's turn as Bana's handler could have been a little more subtle.
Ultimately though, Avner is an ex-Mossad agent who’s spent his life carrying out orders and I’d think it would be out of character to expect him to question more overtly - apart from at the end.
What did you think of the scene where Eric Bana, Daniel Craig and Hanns Zischler kill the female agent, Jeanette?
It was certainly quite hard to watch but, I feel, necessary from the characters’ point of view. She’d killed their friend and colleague and left him naked (and the zoom function on my DVD player wasn’t up to the job of finding out if Ciaran Hinds was totally ‘in character’ ) so their rationale was to do the same to her, as much to send out a message to other would-be assassins as it would be to sate their own feelings of vengeance.
The flashbacks to the Munich atrocity itself - Overused? Overlong? Unnecessary? Integral?
All of the above. Yes, they were a way for Avner to rationalise his mission and for the audience to feel some compassion for a man who is, let's face it, embarking on a clandestine murder spree through Europe but I think the hand was overplayed, especially during the love scene with his wife. We get the idea…
Overall I liked Munich, up to a point. Spielberg has never been one of my favourite directors but I can appreciate his storytelling strengths but not enough for me to want to watch the film again.
What did everyone else think?
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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan