CerebralDebris

I watch a great deal more movies at home than I do in the theater. This has been true basically since I bought a DVD player back in the 90s, and has become even more true as theater prices have crept up (2 adult tix in Manhattan for a non-matinee = $22 + $2 in online purchase fees = more than an entire month of Netflix). Given that I finally bought a nice TV, it’s really hard to justify the theater, especially since I hate crowds of people and NYC is not exactly renowned for its quiet, polite movie audiences (exception: the indie theaters around here are pretty great).

With all that in mind, I’d been stalling on watching Munich for months in part because of its length — it’s just hard to find time to slot in a 3 hour movie — and in part because I wasn’t sure the subject matter would interest me. As it turns out, the subject matter interested me very much, and overall I thought the movie was quite good. I do, however, agree with some critics in the belief that the movie spends too much time on the thriller aspects of the plot and not enough time allowing the audience to really understand the immense psychological, moral, and emotional strains the characters are undergoing.

I also thought that while it makes some effort to stay away from pronouncing one side or the other more morally correct, in the end it’s hard to come away from the movie not feeling like the Israelies were portrayed as more sympathetic than the Palestinians. That may in fact be so — I’m an ignorant American and not fully versed in the intricasies of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict — but I would’ve enjoyed the movie even more, I think, if it had perhaps chronicled two different teams, one from each side, both of which were fully convinced of their righteousness and moral superiority … and allowed the viewer to become attached to both and caught up in their causes.

In the end, I fully agree with the idea that Speilberg is trying to promote with the movie: it is not through rash, tit-for-tat acts of terrorism and counter-terrorism (not so different, sometimes, from terrorism) that progress will be made. It is only through education, communication, and diplomacy that real change can be accomplished. People must be able to see each other as human beings, on both sides, before any true resolution can be reached.

A simple statement to make, surely, but a difficult course to pursue in real life, and I fear that the conflicts in the Middle East will continue long into the future. I do hope that prominent people from both sides will be inspired by Speilberg’s attempts, and will make effort to tell their stories and those of their people, while simultaneously striving to reach a point where those conflicts can be resolved with something other than bullets, blades, and bombs.