Munich: two movies that never became one.
Munich: two movies that never became one.
By Judith Shapiro, Princeton PhD in Politics and head of Impact Communication in Connecticut
My husband Mitch and I saw Munich the other night. It’s not a very good film. The plot is weak, even stupid. We’re asked to believe that the Mossad picks a man whose wife is about to give birth to their first child and whose father is dying, to lead a top secret, extremely dangerous mission. Don’t secret agencies vett people carefully? How much of a psychologist do you have to be to guess that the man will be distracted by thoughts of family? The Mossad also chooses a bomb-maker who, it turns out, is really not a bomb-maker. Equally bizarre is the fact that the movie’s conclusion appears to take place sometime in the fall of 1973 or shortly after. That would be around the time of the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. Yet, the two main Israeli characters – Avner and Ephraim – have a discussion at the end of the film without ever mentioning the war and the trauma it created for Israel. Is the surprise attack by Egypt and Syria not relevant to the story? Would Avner not have returned to Israel to help defend his country against such lethal aggression?
The movie is actually two movies struggling to be one. The first is a spy thriller in which the hunter becomes the hunted; the second is a political tract on how violence begets violence. Movies with weak and confused plots are neither new nor troublesome. What is troublesome are two key political speeches made in the film – the first by a Palestinian, Ali, explaining that he is fighting for his homeland; the second by Avner’s mother explaining the reason she supports any and all actions needed to hold onto Israel, even if those actions turn her son into a killer.
The first speech is part of a conversation between Avner and Ali in which the latter states that every people needs its own country. Avner takes this statement in compete silence, never mentioning that the Jews are also a people and, as such, entitled to their own country. The mother’s speech is even more disturbing. She explains that after the Shoah, the Jews had to take the land of Israel because no one would give it to them. If they took the land, it obviously belonged to someone else. Is that all there is to the Jews’ connection to the land of Israel – that it was there for the taking from its rightful owners? Are there no historic, religious and cultural ties to this particular land? Didn’t the Jews win their independence from colonial rule in the same period that other nations were also gaining their independence under similar conditions?
My younger son, who also saw the film, asked me if I noticed that all the Israeli characters appeared to be Ashkenazi Jews from Europe. Where are the Sephardim whose history is rooted in the Arab Middle East? Since they now make up more than half of the Jewish population of Israel shouldn’t they be represented somewhere in the film? My son’s observation made me think of the final scene in Schindler’s List. The action shifts from Europe to Israel where Jewish survivors of the Holocaust meet at Oskar Schindler’s gravesite. The movie Munich picks up where Schindler’s List leaves off and attempts to show what has happened to those European Jews and their descendents; how they are engulfed in a moral dilemma now that they are no longer powerless. There is some truth to this insight. With power, comes responsibility. Avner, to his credit, tries to limit his killing to the guilty, sparing the innocent whenever possible.
However, his mother’s speech, more than anything else, undermines the legitimacy of the power he wields. Small wonder he chooses to leave Israel.
Posted by Jerry Gordon at January 3, 2006 10:08 PM
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1.
Bill Levinson
said:
"However, his mother’s speech, more than anything else, undermines the legitimacy of the power he wields. Small wonder he chooses to leave Israel."
I didn't see this movie and I am not going to bother. I hate these stories in which the good guys express excessive (or indeed any) remorse for the genuinely bad guys, as opposed to remorse over killing a guy who just had the bad luck to be wearing the wrong color uniform. Tom Clancy's "Without Remorse" was pretty good. The hero is a Navy SEAL (John Kelly, later "Mr. Clark") whose girlfriend is brutally murdered by drug dealers, and he himself is shot and left for dead. He hunts the killers down and offs them with no remorse whatsoever. I'd like to see THAT made into a movie, with terrorists replacing the drug dealers (the way neo-Nazis replaced terrorists in "The Sum of All Fears").
I'm sure that genuine Mossad agents have no qualms about terminating terrorist filth either and, if one does have some [Michael Savage whining tone] sensitivity [/Michael Savage whining tone] problems in the aftermath of a kill, showing him or her pictures of the victims of Islamofascist nail bombs, or maybe an Indonesian girl with her head chopped off for being a Christian, should drive any feelings of guilt out quickly.
Posted by: Bill Levinson on January 4, 2006 03:19 AM
2.
Bess
said:
Bronson in deathwish trillogy. You have got to see that.It's horribly filmed 70's movie but the idea is perfectly fine.
Posted by: Bess on January 4, 2006 09:00 AM
3.
Bill Levinson
said:
Then there was "Sudden Impact," with the rape victim played by Sondra Locke giving her rapists 38-caliber vasectomies before killing them. That's what I'd like to see happen to the Iranian prison guards who rape female prisoners before executing them.
Posted by: Bill Levinson on January 4, 2006 11:51 AM
4.
kuhnkat
said:
Bill Levinson,
not to forget the Muslim rape gangs in a number of areas would be well paid by Sandra Locke type activity!!
Posted by: kuhnkat on January 5, 2006 12:59 AM
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Munich: two movies that never became one.
By Judith Shapiro, Princeton PhD in Politics and head of Impact Communication in Connecticut
My husband Mitch and I saw Munich the other night. It’s not a very good film. The plot is weak, even stupid. We’re asked to believe that the Mossad picks a man whose wife is about to give birth to their first child and whose father is dying, to lead a top secret, extremely dangerous mission. Don’t secret agencies vett people carefully? How much of a psychologist do you have to be to guess that the man will be distracted by thoughts of family? The Mossad also chooses a bomb-maker who, it turns out, is really not a bomb-maker. Equally bizarre is the fact that the movie’s conclusion appears to take place sometime in the fall of 1973 or shortly after. That would be around the time of the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. Yet, the two main Israeli characters – Avner and Ephraim – have a discussion at the end of the film without ever mentioning the war and the trauma it created for Israel. Is the surprise attack by Egypt and Syria not relevant to the story? Would Avner not have returned to Israel to help defend his country against such lethal aggression?
The movie is actually two movies struggling to be one. The first is a spy thriller in which the hunter becomes the hunted; the second is a political tract on how violence begets violence. Movies with weak and confused plots are neither new nor troublesome. What is troublesome are two key political speeches made in the film – the first by a Palestinian, Ali, explaining that he is fighting for his homeland; the second by Avner’s mother explaining the reason she supports any and all actions needed to hold onto Israel, even if those actions turn her son into a killer.
The first speech is part of a conversation between Avner and Ali in which the latter states that every people needs its own country. Avner takes this statement in compete silence, never mentioning that the Jews are also a people and, as such, entitled to their own country. The mother’s speech is even more disturbing. She explains that after the Shoah, the Jews had to take the land of Israel because no one would give it to them. If they took the land, it obviously belonged to someone else. Is that all there is to the Jews’ connection to the land of Israel – that it was there for the taking from its rightful owners? Are there no historic, religious and cultural ties to this particular land? Didn’t the Jews win their independence from colonial rule in the same period that other nations were also gaining their independence under similar conditions?
My younger son, who also saw the film, asked me if I noticed that all the Israeli characters appeared to be Ashkenazi Jews from Europe. Where are the Sephardim whose history is rooted in the Arab Middle East? Since they now make up more than half of the Jewish population of Israel shouldn’t they be represented somewhere in the film? My son’s observation made me think of the final scene in Schindler’s List. The action shifts from Europe to Israel where Jewish survivors of the Holocaust meet at Oskar Schindler’s gravesite. The movie Munich picks up where Schindler’s List leaves off and attempts to show what has happened to those European Jews and their descendents; how they are engulfed in a moral dilemma now that they are no longer powerless. There is some truth to this insight. With power, comes responsibility. Avner, to his credit, tries to limit his killing to the guilty, sparing the innocent whenever possible.
However, his mother’s speech, more than anything else, undermines the legitimacy of the power he wields. Small wonder he chooses to leave Israel.
Posted by Jerry Gordon at January 3, 2006 10:08 PM