The film is adapted from George Jonas's book "Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team" (Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team). The background of the story is that 11 Israeli athletes were kidnapped at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The real event of the last murder. But Spielberg was talking about Israel's revenge action triggered by this incident.
This is a revenge story after a terrorist attack, full of pistols, bombs, tracking, and assassinations, but Spielberg handled the film very plainly and grimly. The temperament of the entire film is closer to some 70s works, such as Coppola's "The Godfather", "The Great Conspiracy of Eavesdropping", Sidney Pollack's "72 Hours of the Condor", and William Friedkin's "The French Drug Trafficking Network" and the "Ipcrees Archives" of the United Kingdom and so on. This is not only in line with the style and temperament of the time when the story occurred, but also an excellent way to create a sense of reality and history. The film photographer Kaminsky is Spielberg's old partner. He is very good at using handheld photography and rough grain effects to create a sense of presence and realism. In addition to the beautiful natural light European location, "Munich" has a large number of dark nights, especially rainy nights. These shots are as blurred and gloomy as a film noir, which set the tone of the film.
Looking at his "Indiana Jones" series, Spielberg is very good at thrilling and intense melodrama, especially the action scene design. Although "Munich" is a story about Israeli intelligence agencies assassinating terrorist organizations, most of the time in the film is not thrilling and even a little flat: no special weapons, no super-powerful agents, no exaggerated fighting or battle scenes... A guy like a university professor, an antique dealer, or a toy craftsman carried out such a clueless assassination. Before leaving, the head office's financial accountant is that no matter what you do and how much money you spend, you must keep an invoice! A sense of absurd reality in John Le Carré's novels emerges. Several assassination scenes made Spielberg deal with their own characteristics: some were tracked home from the street and the protagonist was nervous, some were accidental bombs turned into chaos in a close-up shootout, and some were too powerful to endanger the protagonist...but all The action scenes of the attack are not attracted by gorgeous explosions and gun battles, but by the kind of inner tension. In this regard, "Munich" reproduces the introverted style of Spielberg's early works such as "Duel" and "Jaws".
"Munich" also has a very obvious feature: the film uses multiple counterpoint designs produced by parallel editing. For example, on the one hand, the names of the Israeli athletes who died on TV are listed, on the other hand, Mossad is collecting the names and photos of the assailants. There are exactly 11 revenge targets identified by Israel! There is also a section where the hero is nervously inspecting his house to see if there are hidden bombs, and on the other is a scene where fellow bomb experts are making bombs while demolishing booby traps in the house. The result is that the hero is frightened. He hid in the closet and did not dare to sleep in the bed, and the bomb expert was bombarded to death after he thought he was safe in the house. Although this counterpoint design is somewhat deliberate, it does have a strong effect. It puts two atmospheres and two feelings together, making the contradictions, disharmony, chaos, and inability to choose more prominent. Especially before the end, on the one hand, it is the last and most terrifying part of the Munich tragedy: the police shoots at terrorists at the airport, the terrorists begin to slaughter the kidnapped hostages, and on the other hand, the male protagonist takes home and can’t get rid of it. The fear, guilt, and loss are making love to his wife. The horror of the massacre is intertwined with the climax of the hero, full of questions about death and the desire for the meaning of life.
Director Spielberg, as a Jew, seems to be prone to bias the film towards Israel. But I don't think so-now looking back at this film, the biggest feeling is not that it is partial to Israelis/Jews (although some people think the film is inaccurate), but the humanitarianism that Stewart has always emphasized. With the development of the story, the actor and some of his team members have been questioning the legitimacy of the action, the meaning of revenge, the root of the conflicts between Palestine and Israel, and the position of human nature in the racial and religious conflicts... There is a place in the film, the male protagonist He and his team members were resting in a hidden place, but accidentally ran into a PLO member who was also here to rest, and the two sides began to fight with each other. The Israeli agents pretended to be members of a European revolutionary organization, but the two sides sat together and listened to music. The actor chatted with the leader, and the two sides had a meaningful dialogue about the Jews and the PLO, which made the audience feel that this kind of feud has really deepened in the bones of the bone and is difficult to resolve. The two met at the scene of the assassination the next day, and Israeli agents had to kill the PLO leader. When leaving, the actor looked at his fallen opponent, with mixed feelings in his heart.
For a movie, this topic is too big and heavy, especially in the United States after 9/11. Spielberg’s humanitarian attitude in "Munich" does deepen the theme of the film on the one hand, so that it is not reduced to a thrilling commercial film with action and revenge, but on the other hand it blurs the racial conflict and religious Conflict thinking—sometimes, it is difficult to discuss the problem clearly with the word human nature. From this, I thought of another great director Ridley Scott's film "The Kingdom of Heaven", which is also vague and superficial because it is difficult to grasp this issue clearly, directly, profoundly, and boldly.
"Munich" also has an unnoticeable correspondence: at the beginning of the film, an Israeli athlete was cutting bread, and then he was attacked by a terrorist; at the end, the actor invited his supervisor to his home for dinner. (The original meaning of "break bread" in the line was that the Christians broke bread together for dinner, and later extended it to invite people to eat.) The supervisor refused because the protagonist did not want to return to Israel. The camera is zoomed out, and the background is the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York! Almost all religions have the friendly teaching of sharing bread and eating, but the world has not been more harmonious because of this. Sometimes vague humanity and friendship cannot solve the problem, but the questioning of humanity is always valuable and meaningful. From this perspective, I still think "Munich" is a good starting point!
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