Munich

September 2001 was not the first time terrorism became prime time viewing. Twenty-nine years earlier, at the Munich Olympic Games, the world watched as eleven Israeli athletes were held hostage, and later killed, by the terrorist group Black September.

The events of September 5, 1972 were explored most recently in the Oscar-winning documentary One Day in September. In Munich, Steven Spielberg dramatises the actions of that day and offers a theory of what happened next.

Avner (Eric Bana) is a Mossad agent whose career holds less interest for him than his beloved and heavily pregnant wife. The son of a respected agent, Avner has worked closely with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir however it is his obscurity that sees him selected for “Operation Wrath of God” – a mission of retribution.

Deeply disturbed by the events at the Munich Games, Avner is persuaded of the morality of the mission – to find and kill the eleven men responsible for engineering the murders.

Relinquishing his identity and leaving behind his wife and unborn child, Avner joins with four other agents from South Africa, Germany, France and Britain. Cut off from family and home and living under a tenuous law of revenge the five men have only each other both for support and moral guidance.

Skilled and intelligent, the business of execution is new to them and they approach it with a coltish uncertainty. While they are engaged in an inhumane exercise, the film emphasises their humanness. They are not cold-hearted killers, they make mistakes, they kill reluctantly and they trust the untrustworthy. They have been told that “the only blood that matters is Jewish blood” – but they begin to have doubts.

Tony Kushner, who wrote the screenplay, describes the film as historical fiction. Munich is based in history – documentary footage is interwoven with the drama. Yet the characters and the mission are only hypothesis. Mossad are hardly likely to make their files available for filmmakers.

An accidental encounter with Palestinian assassins leads Avner to a curious exchange with their leader. Posing as a political activist Avner asks his acquaintance why he persists with such violent protest when defeat is inevitable. The answer is frighteningly simple: “Because home is everything”. As Avner and his ancestors know well it is a terrible thing to be without a home.

While the holding and killing of the Israeli athletes was a vicious and appalling act it did not occur in a political vacuum. It was preceded and followed by injustice and brutality. Both Israelis and Palestinians have suffered immensely in an intractable conflict.

That Israelis fear and suffer monstrous retribution in their daily lives is a devastating evil. That the Palestinians have been shown little mercy and are refugees from and in a country that was once their own is a grave injustice. What neither Munich nor One Day in September do is to explain the context of the violence. Indeed to do so would be a task that would extend the parameters of a feature-length film.

Brilliantly recapturing the look and feel of the 1970s Munich is an accomplished film. Tense and brutally violent it is an impassioned memorial to the murdered athletes but it is also a timely reminder of the futility of vengeance. But is it incongruous to use violence to decry violence?

Violence begets violence and revenge fathers retribution and reprisal. There is no future for humanity where retaliation is the basis for justice. Yet the need for justice, for an answer to injustice, is strong. In many cultures blood must be spilled for the dead to be avenged.

In his death Jesus was the circuit-breaker for our intractable conflict with the creator. A great injustice was committed – humanity rejected God. And God himself bore the penalty. 

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