Spielberg defends his 'Munich'

'I knew the minefield was there," says Steven Spielberg, describing the storm of controversy over his new film "Munich." He has been attacked on three fronts, for being anti-Israeli, being anti-Palestinian, and being neither -- which is, those critics say, the sin of "moral equivalency."

"I wasn't naive in accepting this challenge," he says about his film, which begins with the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympiad, and follows a secret Israeli team assigned by prime minister Golda Meir to hunt down those responsible and assassinate them.

"I knew I was going to be losing friends when I took on the subject," he told me during a phone conversation Thursday afternoon. "I am also making new friends." The film, which opened on Friday, had already generated fiery discussion from those who've seen it in previews -- or not seen it, but objected to the very idea of it.

In his film, a character named Avner, played by Eric Bana, heads the assassination squad, and begins to question the morality and utility of his actions. Others in the film articulate a defense of the strategy of revenge. Spielberg says that his film deliberately supplies no simple answers.

"It would make people more comfortable if I made a film that said all targeted assassination is bad, or good, but the movie doesn't take either of those positions. It refuses to. Many of those pundits on the left and right would love the film to land somewhere definite. It puts a real burden on the audience to figure out for themselves how they feel about these issues. There are no easy answers to the most complex story of the last 50 years."

Spielberg said he has been particularly struck by charges that his film makes him "no friend of Israel."

"I am as truly pro-Israeli as you can possibly imagine. From the day I became morally and politically conscious of the importance of the state of Israel and its necessity to exist, I have believed that not just Israel, but the rest of the world, needs Israel to exist.

"But there is a constituency that nothing you can say or do will ever satisfy. The prism through which they see things is so profound and deeply rooted and so much a part of their own belief system that if you challenge that, you challenge everything they believe in. They say the film is too critical of Israel. The film has been shown to Palestinians who think it is too pro-Israel and doesn't give the them enough room to air their grievances.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is, if this movie bothers you, frightens you, upsets you, maybe it's not a good idea to ignore that. Maybe you need to think about why you're having that reaction."

Spielberg, who is the most popular filmmaker in modern history, has regularly chosen to make serious and thoughtful films, some of limited appeal, along with his box-office blockbusters. It is striking that the director of "Jurassic Park" (1993) and the Indiana Jones movies is also the director of "Schindler's List" (1993), "The Color Purple" (1985), "Amistad" (1997) and now "Munich."

"Some of my critics are asking how Spielberg, this Hollywood liberal who makes dinosaur movies, can say anything serious about this subject that baffles so many smart people. What they're basically saying is, 'You disagree with us in a big public way, and we want you to shut up, and we want this movie to go back in the can.' That's a nefarious attempt to make people plug up their ears. That's not Jewish, it's not democratic, and it's bad for everyone -- especially in a democratic society."

Yet what is he saying that has people so disturbed? Careful attention to the film itself suggests that it's not so much what he says as that he dares even to open up the Middle East for discussion.

"My film refuses to be a pamphlet," Spielberg said. "My screenwriter Tony Kushner and I were hoping to make it a visceral, emotional and intellectual experience, combined in such a way that it will help you get in touch with what you feel are the questions the film poses. He said he was taught by his parents, his rabbi and his faith that discussion "is the highest good -- it's Talmudic."

But what about the issue of "moral equivalence," the charge that he equates the Israeli and Palestinian causes, when the rightness of one (or the other) is seen as not debatable?

"Frankly, I think that's a stupid charge. The people who attack the movie based on 'moral equivalence' are some of the same people who say diplomacy itself is an exercise in moral equivalence, and that war is the only answer. That the only way to fight terrorism is to dehumanize the terrorists by asking no questions about who they are and where they come from.

"What I believe is, every act of terrorism requires a strong response, but we must also pay attention to the causes. That's why we have brains and the power to think passionately. Understanding does not require approval. Understanding is not the same as inaction. Understanding is a very muscular act. If I'm endorsing understanding and being attacked for that, then I am almost flattered."

In "Munich," there is a scene where Ali, a member of the Black September group that carried out the 1972 attacks, talks about his idea of a Palestinian homeland. Also a scene where Avner's mother, an original settler in Israel, defends their homeland. And a scene where an Israeli spymaster, played by Geoffrey Rush, provides a strong response to Avner's doubts.

"The whole Israeli-Palestinian idea of home suggests that there are two enormously powerful desires in competition," Spielberg said. "Two rights that are in a sense competing. You can't bring that to a simplicity. The film is asking you to surrender your simplicity on both sides and just look at it again. There was an article in USA Today by a Los Angeles rabbi, accusing me of 'blind pacifism.' That's interesting, because there is not any kind of blind pacifism within me anywhere, or in 'Munich.' I feel there was a justified need to respond to the terrorism in Munich, which is why I keep replaying images of the Munich massacre throughout the movie.

"In 1972, when Black September used the Olympics to announce themselves to the world, they broke all the rules and broke the boundaries of that conflict. Israel had to respond, or it would have been perceived as weak. I agree with Golda Meir's response. The thing you have to understand is, Munich is in Germany. And these were Jews dying all over again in Germany. For Israel, it was a national trauma. The Avner character, in the end, simply questions whether the response was right.

"Sometimes a response can provoke unintended consequences. The Rush character and Avner's mother reply. But people feel my voice is represented in Avner. The movie says I don't have an answer. I don't know anyone else who does. But I do know that the dialogue needs to be louder than the weapons."

Spielberg, a onetime boy wonder who directed his first commercial project at the age of 22, is now 59.

"I guess as I grow older," he said, "I just feel more responsibility for telling the stories that have some kind of larger meaning. Most of my movies sum everything up. I try to make movies to give audiences the least amount of homework and the most amount of pleasure. The majority of my movies have done that. But as I get older, I feel the burden of responsibility that comes along with such a powerful tool. I certainly have made movies by popular demand. There is a distinction between moviemaking and filmmaking. I want to do both."

He repeated that he was wounded by the charge that he is "no friend of Israel" because his film asks questions about Israeli policies. "This film is no more anti-Israel than a similar film which offered criticism of America is anti-America," he said. "Criticism is a form of love. I love America, and I'm critical of this administration. I love Israel, and I ask questions. Those who ask no questions may not be a country's best friends."

Is the Middle East without a solution? I asked. Will there be an endless cycle of terror and reprisal? What about the startling fact that Israel's entrenched political enemies, Ariel Sharon from the right, and Shimon Peres from the left, have resigned from their parties and joined in a new party that says it is seeking a path to peace?

"What I believe," Spielberg said, "is that there will be peace between Israelis and Palestinians in our lifetimes."

'Everybody is sort of saying they wish I would be silent' The telephone rang, and it was Steven Spielberg once again. After our previous conversation, I sent him a defense of "Munich" written by Jim Emerson, editor of rogerebert.com (his article appears on the Web site). It includes quotes from many Jews highly critical of Spielberg.

"[Emerson's article] brought together some sources and some criticisms I hadn't seen," Spielberg said, "and it made me want to be more specific about the responsibility of a Jewish artist.

"Everybody is sort of saying they wish I would be silent. What inspired me by what I read in Emerson's article is that silence is never good for anybody. When artists fall silent, it's scary. And when Jewish artists fall silent about Israel, it's maybe not so much because we think asking questions will do damage to Israel, but because we're intimidated by the shrillness and hysteria with which these questions are received sometimes.

"And I guess, because I'm a Jewish-American artist, that means that I'm not willing to shut up because somebody who claims to speak for the Jewish community tells me to. I guess I have a very deep faith in the intelligence and in the fairness and in the intellectual courage of the Jewish community, and I know that the questions I'm posing with 'Munich' are also questions that many Jews here and in Europe and Israel are asking.

"I think that Jews have always understood that the combination of art and advocacy are not the work for the shy or the timid, and that's why Jews down through history have produced so many important advocates -- because the Jewish community traditionally celebrates a variety of thought. I do not believe that 'Munich' will polarize and was not intended to polarize that community which I love."

A waste of time and money. This looks too dopey to even watch on TV for free

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Close Encounters of the Middle East Kind
FILM
By steven zeitchik
December 16, 2005

The most surprising thing about Steven Spielberg's "Munich," a conversation piece long before it even got out of production, is the limpness with which it lands. There's something trumped-up about the whole enterprise that actually renders it less substantial — scenes milking the extra second before an explosion, assassins debating ethics with improbable gravitas and, of course, the very hype surrounding the film's release. Imagine a scene that combines a terrorism flashback with sex, and ask if it could possibly whip us into more emotional froth. Then add an opera score, as the film does.

Spielberg has never been one to ease off the schmaltz button, and it would be naive to think he'd change now. "Munich" is a film that painfully wants to be heard, so painfully that it shouts its prescription at every turn. But to listen to its cry is to be struck by a strange absence of meaning.

Let's dispense with the necessary: "Munich" is not a pro- or anti-Israel movie, any more than "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is a pro- or anti-alien movie. In telling of the strike against the Black September leaders who planned the 1972 Olympic attacks, the film does have a message about how Israel should operate ?? one that will clearly make some Israelis uncomfortable ?? but it doesn't question the country's basic right to exist and defend itself.

But more on politics later. The movie begins by dropping us into the titular city during the attack, which Spielberg and longtime cinematographer Janusz Kaminski film with a hint of vérité, the camera's unease mirroring the accompanying global jitteriness. If the bloody sequences (like those that follow in flashback) feel fetishistic, they also have a perverse grandeur that sets up the need for retribution.

Back in Israel, that retribution is coming together. In a disconcertingly cozy living room, Golda Meir presides over her intelligence team. The strong but silent (un-Israeli?) Avner Kauffman — played competently, if in screaming need of an accent coach, by Australian Eric Bana — is given a choice: He can leave behind his pregnant wife to travel to Europe for a retaliation mission, or he can turn his back on...his country? his patriot-hero father? some other motive? It's never made clear. Avner accepts his mission, of course, and soon he and his mates are given money and vague directions.

Even with muddled information that leads to Clouseau-ish moments — the film illustrates nicely how intelligence often gets conducted in the dark — they kill a few plotters. The assassinations are played with a maximum of suspense to no particular end. There's something manipulative about having the young daughter of a target answer a phone that's set to explode; it uses an unknown child first to work us into an artificial cringe, and then offers an equally manufactured relief when she's saved. (Sorry for the spoiler, but of course a Spielberg child would never be hurt.)

And so it goes, a film that manages to be very intense without being particularly good. Soon, the Palestine Liberation Organization begins striking back, first against innocents and then against the team. Spielberg suavely uses the indirection of an off-screen news report to inform of these attacks, as if to suggest that the consequences of the team's actions exist only at the edge of their consciousness — that to effectively carry out assassinations, one must tune out everything, even threats to one's survival. But what we also don't see is how much Spielberg plays fast and loose with causality: One of the supposed consequences of the assassinations, a deadly Black September attack the Athens airport in 1973, has never been linked by historians to the Israeli retaliations. (Moreover, the film is based on "Vengeance," a disputed book that purports to show the Israeli team haunted by its actions.) Some may argue that the film fictionalizes to serve its cautionary lesson. But when you start monkeying with such biggies as motive and consequence, you're crossing a line.

As characters zip around the world in a kind of Jewish "Alias," they find time to ponder the ethical limits of counter-terrorism and what obligations/exemptions apply to the Jewish state, all delivered from Tony Kushner's and Eric Roth's wonderfully lyrical, if declamatory, script. Phrases like "Butcher's hands, gentle souls" and "All the blood comes back to us" slide off characters' tongues. It's eloquent stuff, but after a while the alternating chaos and pathos grows tiring. In the middle of yet one more exchange of gunfire, you might be tempted to close your eyes and wait for the movie to tell you how it all ends; all the energy spent setting up the clues never leads anywhere.

What Spielberg seems to have wanted is a morality play ?? a warning about the dangers of emotions in politics, especially Israeli politics. Which brings us back to the Zionism question. There's been some advance speculation in the media that the movie would be decidedly pro-Israel, but it's a hard case to make, unless you consider the very decision to show Israeli retaliation as a kind of political pornography meant to get the faithful off on the sight of dead terrorists, absent the inhibiting effect of morals or context.

But to worry that the movie has an anti-Israel message ?? as some observers and leaders in the Jewish community have ?? is similarly to miss the point. The film does rebuke Israeli hawkishness, but that isn't its primary concern. All that seems to matter to Spielberg is that violence begets violence. The rest is commentary.

As it happens, that commentary ?? the how and why of violence and its effects ?? can be profound and relevant, and one wishes for more of it here. For all the seesawing between Arab and Israeli horrors, the film never packs the punch of moral ambiguity. It's a thin line between sly equivocation and preachy mush, and Spielberg can never seem to get out of the way of his own wan message.

That the message comes in 1970s wrapping doesn't help. Why in the name of the International Olympic Committee was a movie about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict set exclusively in this era? Certainly it's a production coup; the loud brown suits and washed-out tableaus are a delight. But I suspect something more subtle: an attempt to isolate the argument's strains from modern prejudices. Sadly, this is the film's great cop-out. A more ambitious movie about the Israelis and Palestinians would have shown them as they live today, humanized, with all the attendant cinematic (and commercial) risks and payoffs. "Munich" wants to float above the fray, disengaged from the modern world while still claiming the authority to comment on it. (The setting also leaves it open to anachronism: A poignant and funny scene in which Palestinian and Israeli strike forces meet is ruined by an all-too-modern discussion of Palestinian statehood.)

By the last quarter the film completely unravels, going from a plea for peace to a character study of a man betrayed by his government. Even if we hadn't seen it before, it would feel false. An agent this seasoned ?? even in a more innocent time in Israeli history ?? shouldn't be this wide-eyed.

In a recent interview, Spielberg said that he didn't want to make another "Raid on Entebbe," the Charles Bronson vehicle that whiffs of propaganda. Spielberg's movie distinguishes itself from that pulp, but is no less binary in its way. In setting up a world where there are those who get the conflict's pointlessness and those (fools) who don't, he has simply swapped one form of simple-mindedness for another.

Late in the film, when the strike team, on a lark, kills an agent who killed one of its own, the mission becomes its own end, running on a logic separate from, even antagonistic to, the original goal. There is something important poking through here, not just about the loss of innocence but also about the (possibly controversial) interchangeability of hunter and hunted in a fraught ecosystem. But the ideas never develop teeth, and the drama isn't chilling enough to make up the difference. At the end of nearly three hours, "Munich" amounts to little more than a stylish bumper sticker — well meaning and eye catching but ephemeral, a deceptively slight work that dissolves in its own seriousness.

Steven Zeitchik is a staff writer at Variety.

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