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January 10, 2006
MUNICH, IN SEQUENCE
I've been looking for the best way to engage in a discussion about Munich. What I have found, as I discuss the film with others, is that people end up citing different scenes that have had an impact on them.
So what I decided to do, as a starting point, is to break the film out, sequence by sequence, which I have done for Act One, Act Two and Act Three. In the process of doing this, a lot of the detail work becomes clearer.
But first, an overview, so you won't choke to death. (And a party for anyone who gets to Act III alive!)
For instance… and if you haven't seen the film, this may be the time to abandon this entire column…
The film is far more cleanly structured than a lot of people seem to be understanding. First act, Avner is blinded by belief, but is not a gung-ho crazy caricature. He is a man whose life is more about his family than his country at this moment. But his loyalty to Israel is deep. And his faith that his government would never mislead him is boundless.
The hints of trouble are there. One of the first thing Avner's handler, Ephraim, says to him is that not asking questions is a good sign. Meir's somber exit after he is assigned. The disconnection from the government ("You can leave questions for us in the safe deposit boxes, but there should be no questions.")
The Group meets cute at the dinner table. Strong personalities. Distinct roles.
The first kill is easy. The man is unprepared. There is no resistance. He is aging. And they shoot him down with guns. The Cleaner has nothing to "clean" but a single bullet casing.
The Cleaner, Carl, is also the one member of the group who comes to the activity with doubts. At the first dinner, he says, "It's strange, isn't it, to think of yourself as an assassin." After the first kill, he brings up a Pesach story about God questioning why the angels are rejoicing over dead Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea, still humans he created.
Avner finishes the story, as the angels responded, "God, we are celebrating because when the people hear what happened to The Egyptians, they'll understand your point."
"Which was?"
Steve kicks in, "Don't fuck with the Jews."
So ends the first act. With cockiness.
ACT TWO
The act starts with Avner meeting Louis, who is the real power contact for information. Louis immediately offers, "Identity… that's the boring part now." He also calls his family "Ideologically promiscuous."
Avner and his partners are now moving into the ambiguity of the world… fake names… fake ideologies… moral ambiguity… everything available for a price. And this is where so many people lost the thread on the movie. The moralist message of the movie is that once you get into the murk of it all, the cocky self-righteousness of it all starts to fade by necessity. You cannot dive into the pool and remain dry, no matter how righteous your cause. (Of course, when Spielberg & Co. dared to point out that there is always someone on the other side of what you feel so self-righteous about, black & white thinkers got out the pitchforks.)
When in the second killing the daughter of a target is almost killed, but kept from death at the very last moment, some misread the purpose of the scene as a simple thriller gag where the little girl almost dies. But like so much of Munich, it is a yard marker. The ferocity with which Anver acts to try to keep the little girl from being killed is the key. This is not their target.
The third kill is in Cyprus. This time, Avner meets and has a cordial conversation with the target. There is too much boom in the bomb and Avner is almost killed, and so is a couple in the room to the other side of the target. Avner sees the gore. He sees that the innocent woman may be blinded.
Targets 4, 5, and 6 are killed in a raid in Beirut that is outside of the range where Avner's team is supposed to go. But the rule is broken to achieve the goal. The assault is brutal and quick. Avner saves one young Palestinian's life.
But for going to Beirut in cooperation with the Israeli army, Avner is called to the "principal's office." For the trip, Avner needs to put on a blindfold, in an act of ultimate trust. He is still capable of that. He is delivered to Papa. Papa compares his hands to Avner's. "We are tragic men. Such big hands, gentle souls."
This conversation gives us almost every theme of the film in one place.
Referring to a fruit tree Papa is picking from, Avner says, "These are going to be too sour to eat."
Papa counters, "Skin them and prick them and boil them in sugar. A little torture and you'll see how nice they are."
Are they talking fruit or people?
"We don't work with governments… but you did what you did because you have to feed your family."
Here is an excuse for any behavior you choose.
"We paid this price so Vichy scum could be replaced by Gaullist scum and the Nazis could be replaced by Stalin and America. Stay away from governments."
Papa defines moral equivalism. He has been there and back.
The second act is over. Avner has lost control of his mission and, to some degree, of his group. He and his men are not hard enough for this journey. And they are about to be flailing in the deep end of the pool.
ACT THREE
Louis/Papa sending Avner and his men to Athens to kill a target who is not on their list… a replacement of someone they already killed. This is a corner turned, going outside of the mission in order to be responsive.
In Athens, the group will be confronted in their "safe house" with a group of militant Palestinians… who were also sent there by Louis/Papa. Is it a punishment? A challenge? We never really know. But we now know that the strings are being pulled. Papa & Louis have a lot more control of what's happening than Avner does.
The bomb goes wrong again and the milquetoast of the group takes it on himself to fix the problem. In the process, the team is exposed to the bodyguards of the target on the way out of the hotel. Again, Avner sees a Palestinian with whom he has had a cordial conversation killed right in front of him. Things continue to become more personal.
Next, Louis offers/sends-Avnet-to-kill Ali Hassan Salameh… who is being protected by the CIA because he has agreed not to attack American targets so long as they protect him.
The team starts to break apart. The issues of whether bodyguards are to be considered civilians or combatants is discussed. If they are armed, it is decided, they are not civilians. Another marker. Further down the rabbit hole.
Even though they have decided they can kill anyone who is armed, the killing is thwarted by what first seems like drunks and soon thereafter are revealed to be CIA. Another country's government heard from.
There is a girl in the bar. Avner stays loyal to his wife. Carl doesn't.... and it turns out she is a killer. Carl is dead. So what do they do? Now they have to go kill her. A straight revenge killing… not about Munich or Israel… just self-righteous murder.
Louis and Papa meet with Avner to give him her information.
Papa: " We inhabit a world of intersecting secrecies. We live and die at the places where those secrecies meet. That is what we accept… hmm? We buy information for you from your enemies. They sell it. You are not the only people looking for names."
Avner: "You're telling me I'm being hunted now?"
Louis: "He's telling you it's time for you to quit."
Papa: "The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. But time and chance happens to them all. (pause) Evil falls suddenly. Who can say when it falls?"Papa's words are not just eloquent. He was quoting the bible. Ecclesiastes 9:11 And I have no idea whether that is just a stunning coincidence.
Ecclesiastes 9:11 - "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."
The hunter has become the hunted. Avner and his men are through the looking glass.
On the way to kill this woman, Robert cannot take the moral pressure anymore. This is yet another place where Spielberg/Kushner/Roth reassert the moral position of Judaism.
"I don't know that we ever were that decent. Thousands of years of hatred doesn't make you decent. But we were supposed to be righteous. It's a beautiful thing. That's Jewish. That's what I knew. That's what I was taught. And now I'm losing that… and I lose that and… that's… that's everything. That's my soul."
Avner lets him sit this one out.
This is the most personal of all the killings. They use some kind of blowgun. The woman exposes her breasts, hoping for some advantage by distraction. And when she dies, her housecoat falls completely open. Avner covers her up… but Hans opens the coat back up.
Hans regrets it later, but the lust for vengeance has made him "not himself." He sums up their work to date:
"In seven months, we've killed six of the eleven names. We've killed one replacement. One of our targets is in prison and four, including Ali Hassan Salameh, is at large. One of our own has fallen. Since we began, the other side has sent letter bombs to eleven embassies, hijacked three planes, killed 130 passengers in Athens, and wounded scores more… and killed out military attaché in Washington. Some of it was done by a Venezuelan called Carlos "The Jackal," who replaced Zaid Muchassi, who replaced Hussein Al-Chir. Black September's original leadership has been decimated. But new leaders are emerging for whom Black September wasn't violent enough. And to dispatch our six dispatched targets, we must have spent something close to $2 million. Mrs. Meir says to the Knesset, 'The World will see that killing Jews will from now on be an expensive proposition.' But killing Palestinians isn't exactly cheap. If all eleven were dead, you'd stop?"
"Yes."
"You're lying. What about their replacements? With each child we kill, we create six more."
"Then we'll have to keep killing them then."
"Forever?"
"Five targets are still alive. That's five men that need to be killed. Eventually you forget that in the beginning, you hated doing it. For me, personally, I feel less every day. One day I am going to wake up, I'm going to kill them, and to go to bed, and I'm not going to feel anything at all. "
Soon after, they find Hans on a park bench. He's been murdered.
When Avner gets back to his bedroom, he relives all of the killings in a fit of paranoia. One by one, he looks for the ways he will be killed as his team has killed others… until he ends up sleeping on the closet floor… but he can't even sleep there.
Intercut with this, Robert is at home. Close up on one of his toys, a merry-go-round. There is one metal "passenger." It comes around to touch a detonation device on the table. A pause. An explosion. The bomb maker is dead. Even watching it over and over, it is unclear whether it was an accident.
And then there were two… the most gung-ho he-man of the group and the most conflicted/tortured, Avner.
One last killing and Avner hopes he can go home, wherever that is. He no longer has enough perspective to know he has lost it. What a team of five was doing is now down to two. Two of his men have been murdered, another dies suspiciously. It should be over, but it is not.
Two men and two rifles. They get seen. Avner has to shoot a young Palestinian boy in the head and they run off, bullets lying behind them, barely escaping.
It's over. Now Israel wants to know what Avner knows. But he is loyal to his one last thread of identity outside of his family.
When he returns home, he is paranoid and unable to reconnect with his wife.
The most controversial sequence in the film seems to be the sex scene at the end of the movie. But you can't really judge that sequence without considering the fact that it is a bookend for the film with the other sex sequence between Avner and his wife, Daphna.
Spielberg and writers Tony Kushner and Eric Roth use the sex in much the way Malick uses the crocodile in The Thin Red Line. When the movie starts, the men invade and bring the crocodile out if its natural water, much as the men have been pulled from their natural place. At the end, the crocodile submerges, back to where it belongs.The crocodile is metaphorically the spirit of the men. In order to be at war, they must remove themselves from their nature. And when they go home, they must try to submerge into it again.
Daphna is many months pregnant in the first scene, but they still are having a mutually fulfilling sexual relationship. They are connected in more than a physical way. And they talk afterwards about things of importance to them both. They agree to the conditions of Avner's assignment.
In the end, when Avner comes home - to a home he has never been to, as he has moved Daphna and their daughter to Brooklyn - Avner cannot submerge back into his life. And the sex scene is virtually an assault by Daphna on his spirit, like electric paddles to a man with no heartbeat. Only after his daydream of Munich - which many made fun of - and Daphna's grasp of his face and the power of "I love you" can Avner allow himself to relax for the first time in the film since going undercover. He allows his weight to be on top of his wife… his family.
The very next shot is Avner tilling the soil in his backyard… he is preparing for new growth… a new season… the continuation of his life.
As happened to Kubrick, too many anxious critics mistook sex for sex and forgot to ask "What is really happening in this scene?"
The final sequence has Ephraim making one more run at bringing Avner back into the fold. But now that he is Home, he can't go back. And Ephraim can't move towards him, unable even to break bread with Avner and his family.
My analysis of Ephraim's refusal is that if he gives in to Avner's moral position, agree with it or not, that his façade may get the tiny crack in it that will lead him down the same road as Avner… away from the work of death when necessary.
But shouldn't we all be breaking bread with Avner? Shouldn't we be challenging ourselves to smell the death for which we root? Even if we are true believers, which Avner was, should we be expected - as human beings - to be able to suppress our humanity when faced with killing other human beings, no matter what evil they may have done? Does doubting suggest weakness or does the lack of doubting guarantee it?
These are the questions of Munich. And I hope more people will dive into it and swim in its ideas more aggressively than many of us have so far.
Like the best of Kubick, for the first time really, Spielberg has given us a movie that is built to grow inside of our hearts and thoughts like a compelling weed. He has authored many delights that will last forever. But there is a muscle to Munich that is new… that is mature… that challenges us the way Fight Club did… the way that The Graduate did… that Full Metal Jacket does.
And the more I chew on it, the more flavor I can taste. There is no greater gift for a true movie lover.
Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | Munich In SequenceDecember 28, 2004 - Movies You Should Have Seen, But Didn't
December 29, 2004 - The Ten Worst
December 30, 2004 - The Ten Best
January 3, 2006 - Reflections On A New Year
January 6, 2006 - Sundance Preview
January 5, 2006 - The Business Of 2001, Pt 1
