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.

Originally released in 1956, the film still holds up quite well today. It’s based on the true story of a prison escapee – here called Fontaine – and set almost entirely in his cell, and the washroom where he and his fellow prisoners are taken once a day. The film is 90% english-subtitled French, with some non-subtitled German spoken by the guards. Both the dialog and the narration are sparse, and a lot of what characters are thinking is left to be discerned from watching the actors’ faces and body movements.

There’s some standard “old movie” goofiness – bad sound effects, some overacting here and there, but by and large it’s a very solid film. You can feel yourself getting tense as Fontaine’s plans for escape come slowly together, even as the Germans are preparing to execute him. The last-minute arrival of a young French boy who had been in the German army throws a wrench into the works for Fontaine, but the boy ultimately proves a vital piece of the quest.

There were two things that stood out about the film for me, both very positive: for one, since this was a 1950’s movie, the director isn’t obsessed with modern jump-cuts, stutter cams and the like. Most shots are long and unmoving, giving you real time to see the actors’ faces and eyes. The second thing I enjoyed was the lack of a score, other than at the very beginning and very end of the movie. This lent a lot of importance to the sound effects, making the footsteps of an approaching guard or the loud ratcheting of a lock that much more significant. As the end finally approaches, the tension that these two things have helped to build really matters, especially as the protagonist is faced with a series of agonizing choices that sometimes bring him to near-paralysis.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. As both a prison movie and an early example of post-WW2 films about the war, I recommend it.