Munich (2005) Directed by Steven Spielberg Written by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth. Based on Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-terrorist Team by George Jonas
Early in the morning of 5 September 1972, Palestinian terrorists stormed the quarters of the Israeli delegation to the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, killing two athletes and taking nine others hostage. In the botched German police raid that followed, one policeman, five of the eight kidnappers, and all nine hostages were killed. The three surviving kidnappers were released by Germany after the hijacking of a Lufthansa passenger jet the next month. Steven Spielberg's latest pseudo-historical film, Munich, tells the story of the Mossad hit squad charged with tracking down and killing the terrorists thought to be responsible for the Munich massacre.
To head the squad, Israeli prime minister Golda Meir personally selects her former bodyguard, Avner. Joining him are Hans, a former antiques dealer who forges the group's documents; Robert, a toymaker who builds their bombs; Carl, the `worrier' who erases evidence from the crime scenes; and Steve, the Jewish-supremacist getaway driver. Though none of the five men have prior training as assassins, they successfully engineer the shootings and bombings of some half dozen of their eleven targets. Much of their intelligence is purchased from Louis, a shadowy French anarchist who helps them in the mistaken belief that they are not government agents. Louis's father was a French Resistance fighter during the war but is now disillusioned with statism. "We paid this price so Vichy scum could be replaced with Gaullist scum, and the Nazis could be replaced by Stalin and America ... We don't work with governments,'' he says, as if complicity in an assassination is somehow justified when no state is involved.
After the first few killings, the hit squad begin to have doubts about whether what they are doing is right. The mild-mannered Robert has trouble reconciling his behaviour with his sense of identity as a Jew ("Jews don't do wrong because our enemies do wrong... We're supposed to be righteous.") and later as a human being. Avner frames the dilemma in more practical terms, noting that they have been given no proof that any of their targets had any hand in the Munich incident, and moreover that for every terrorist they kill a new and more fanatical one steps in to take his place. Only Steve remains resolute in his devotion to their task. "Stop your agonizing!"' he barks to the others. "It's counterproductive." However, in the end the other squad members are unable to come to terms with their actions. Three of them are killed – one probably by suicide – and Avner eventually returns home to his wife and child with deep emotional scars.
That Munich does not endorse any political point of view comes as somewhat of a surprise from Spielberg, an ardent supporter of Israel. The film's purpose is simply to show the effects of politically motivated violence, both on its victims and its perpetrators, and to demonstrate its futility. For this reason, it has come under attack by both the left and the right, the former for humanizing the Israeli assassins, and the latter for making uncomfortably close comparisons between the Palestinian terrorists and the Israeli counter-terrorists. What socialists will find distressing about the film, however, is that it offers only the shallowest of analyses of the socio-economic causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and likewise does not point to any particular solutions. These flaws are especially disappointing considering that screenwriter Tony Kushner describes himself as a "historical materialist socialist". Some characters in the film see the conflict as a religious and racial issue, but the film never uses historical materialism to trace these views to their socio-economic source, nor socialist theory to show that the Israeli and Palestinian assassins, as members of the working class, have more in common with each other than with their respective government leaders. The best we get is some unresolved moral agonizing and the failure of religion and patriotism to assuage the assassins' guilty consciences.
Given this nebulous treatment, there is the danger that viewers will be led to conclude there is no solution to conflicts such as those in the Middle East. But perhaps at least some will be stimulated into thinking about the real source of political violence, whom it benefits, and how to stop it once and for all.
Tristan Miller
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