Munich
Narratively speaking, Munich is, literally, the oldest story in the book. A handsome young man is called upon to protect his homeland from a monster. He ventures out into the world to slay the monster, thus saving his homeland, but once he returns home he find that the experience he’s gathered in the world leaves him incapable of remaining there.
Thematically, complex questions of nationalism, tribalism, religion and ideology ping-pong and ricochet all over the place. But they all keep circling back to the prime Spielbergian themes of “Family” and “Home.”
And then there’s the question of “Home.” The Jews want a home, but so do the Palestinians. The espionage family has a wonderful, warm home in the French countryside. Everywhere Eric turns, people are falling in love, having children, setting up housekeeping, making plans. The terrorists targeted for assassination are shown bickering with their wives and doting on their children, going on dates and having parties. There isn’t an inhuman one in the bunch and they all seem to have nice homes and good families.
In terms of genre, something of a head-scratcher. It’s structured like an espionage thriller, like Three Days of the Condor, and certainly is as suspensful and gripping as that movie, but tonally it feels closer a historical drama like Schindler’s List.
Spielberg works very hard to keep things real and cliche-free and mostly succeeds (some cliches do slip through, such as the cold-blooded assassin cooly walking up a darkened staircase while slipping on his black leather gloves, or the espionage guys talking about assassinations and terror plots while slicing vegetables or tinkering with toys). The assassination sequences don’t look or feel like anything ever shown before. The assassins are human and prone to mistakes and improvisation. Nothing feels planned or flawless (unlikethe assassinations in Three Days of the Condor). For every cute Spielbergism that slips through, there are a dozen scenes of stunning originality, like the assassination of the woman in Holland. Not a pleasant film by any means, I had to take a break in the middle of watching it — not because of its unpleasantness, but to catch my breath, which I had been holding rather too much without realizing it.
