I liked Munich, liked it a lot actually, and I like most Spielberg movies. Of his later efforts (with the exception of The Terminal, which I never saw) I've liked everything: War of the Worlds was competent and exciting despite being plagued by an anti-climactic ending (the aliens get sick? c'mon...) and the presence of yet another bug-eyed child actor in distress for which he seems to have a penchant for inserting into his films, I thought Minority Report was near-brilliant and one of the best films of its year, I had fun with Catch Me If You Can, and I even liked the mostly-panned A.I. even though I believe if it had ended a half-hour sooner it would've been a masterpiece. I think Spielberg's responsible for two perfect films: Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark. And he gets a lot of credit for trying to tackle the big issues in films like Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, and Amistad, even if he doesn't always completely succeed.
He's back trying to tackle the big questions again in Munich, and certainly that's to his credit, but his reach exceeds his grasp here, again, I believe. Munich tries to be two movies simultaneously and yet it's never really fully one or the other. Is this an action/chase movie about a band of assassins chasing down bad guys, or is this an introspective drama about the nature of nebulous concepts like revenge, honor, justice, etc?
As an action movie it is a partial success, even though it succumbs to the old cliches and plot contrivances - try and guess what's going to happen after the aloof veteran finally opens up to Bana's character and they share a moment, and then separate...do you think maybe that might be his last night on earth? And if you think the sensitive toy/bomb-maker who doesn't really want to be killing people in the first place is going to survive to confront some sort of moral quandary akin to the one Bana experiences, well, welcome to your first movie.
And as a thoughtful drama the movie is even less of a success because, well, for starters the acting isn't that great. Bana's been on my shit list ever since I suffered through The Hulk, and as I watched him trying to emote and struggling to contort his face into some representation of the inner struggle it felt like I was watching a Jewish Ben Affleck trying his best to cry his way through the climax of Armageddon. There's one especially dreadful scene near the end of the film when Bana's home with his wife in Brooklyn and they're making love, and as he's going through the motions he keeps having these images flash in his mind of how the Munich athletes suffered and how they died and his face looks like he could be watching a baseball game, or horses fucking, or a plane crash, or...anything but what he's supposedly imagining. The introspection also fails because Spielberg thinks the best way to get us thinking is to hit us over the head with these thoughtful images. I liked the pan to the World Trade towers in the final shot, but Golda Meir's soliloquies, the scenes with his mother, the comment that 'your mother is Israel,' shit like that just had me rolling my eyes. "Every civilization finds it has to negotiate compromises with itself," Meir says early on in the movie. "Oh really," I thought, "do you think that's what the film is supposed to be about?" I don't know that subtlety is something that lends itself naturally to film, it's a demonstrative art form and subtext isn't always as important, I recognize that, but Stephen, at least try, mmkay?
But with all that said, Munich is a good film. In my last semester at UNC I took an English course that was popular with all majors, Southern Lit, and I was one of the handful of English majors in a class of 30 or so. I always felt the prof was being a bit harder on me b/c of that, and it feels like I'm being harder on ol' SS, here, too, because I expect more from him. Munich is not bad, it is by no means a failure, and it is worth your time. But I don't know if Spielberg can adequately tackle the serious stuff. His best films have just been fun popcorn flicks, and it is this viewer's hope that he returns to that genre.
No comments:
Post a Comment