My New York Times Review of Munich (please FReep)

01.10.06 | Mia T

[Mia T]

My New York Times Review of Munich (please FReep)

CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE WORST KIND

January 9, 2006

Reviewer: miat22 (Mia T)

... to borrow a phrase, perversely, from a Spielberg flick about benign intelligence.

Munich, with its false premises, phony pieties and outright lies -- Spielberg fantasy wrapped in sober documentary -- is a verisimilitudinous contrivance that is pernicious, especially now, especially here, especially if we understand Spielberg's real motivation.

Truth matters not at all to Spielberg, and courage matters even less. To advance his fallacious argument, he has Golda Meir speak words she never said, never would have said and, obviously, cannot now disavow. Posthumous misappropriation is a preferred tactic of the abject coward.

Munich is less about Meir avenging the Munich massacre than it is about Bush waging the War on Terror. The historical (Munich) allusion is key to understanding Spielberg.

The core of his anti-war argument: By fighting back, we become our enemy. Ironically, with Munich, the same can now be said of Spielberg.

Is Spielberg humanizing the terrorist really any different from Riefenstahl humanizing Hitler? If anything, Spielberg is more contemptible. Whereas Riefenstahl symbolizes the naïve actress and director who is induced to deal with devils, Spielberg is self-actuated and aware.

Hollywood IS DreamWorks, fantastical and unthinking and solipsistic by definition.

To mitigate its danger, people capable of critical thinking must take on Hollywood... and must do so in Hollywood venues.

The printed word, sad to say, no longer carries the day.



Was this review helpful to you?
VOTE HERE

also:

AFTERWORD
MUNICH: A CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE WORST KIND
(please see post 38)

THE 'MUNICH' ALLUSION:
THE DANGER OF SPIELBERG AND THE AMERICAN LEFT
(Please see post 60)


WAR AND TREASON AND THE NEW YORK TIMES
(Please see post 65)

COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006

[Mia T]

a 'please FReep' ping :)

[Mia T]

ping

[Mia T]

bump

[Mia T]

bump

[Mia T]

bump

[Mia T]

bump

[Mia T]

bump

[Mia T]

bump

[Mia T]

^

[E.G.C.]

Mia T. bump.

[Miss Marple]

I voted. I don't think you can vote, though, if you aren't registered with the New York Times. You might give people a bugmenot password, and that might get your totals up higher.

[johnny7]

Will comment later... got 'business' in NY.

[Mia T]

Thanx. :)

Great idea, bugmenot. Not sure if NYT allows more than one vote per ID, tho.

(The only reason I'd like to get the numbers up is positioning, i.e., to avoid having the review buried in the back pages of the site.)

[FlyVet]

Bumped and Freeped. I notice the reviewers who loved the movie saw it purely as entertainment or believe it to be historically accurate.

I saw a profile on the movie "Alexander", in which Oliver Stone said something like "We're not historians; directors have 'License'." IOW, "We can take a historical event and twist it to read the way we need it to read." In this case, no thanks.

[Mia T]

thanx. :)

post-911, we need to revoke that 'license.'

[jmaroneps37]

I am getting a very good feeling about what is happening in Hollywood. It looks like they are getting ready to give America the finger on Oscar night by giving the best picture award to Broke-back Mountain.
Combine that with jon stewart running the show and they will send a big message to the few people who still go to movies that " You will continue to be insulted and you WILL take it, LIKE it or not!. And oh yeah, vote Democrat and death to America!"
All of this just in time for this important mid-term election. How nice is that?

[Mia T]

thanx :)

[Chewie84]

"I saw a profile on the movie "Alexander", in which Oliver Stone said something like "We're not historians; directors have 'License'." IOW, "We can take a historical event and twist it to read the way we need it to read.""

Amen to that. Spielberg has already proved to be an expert at that with the "Into the West" miniseries that came out last summer. The first half of it was pretty good, but after that, it was mainly just "Noble Indian lived in perfect peace and harmony until evil, smelly White Man came and destroyed everything for no reason."
In that miniseries, they glossed over the Indian attacks on settlers, they REALLY glossed over the battle of Little Big Horn and its aftermath (Even though a fairly major character in the series dies in Little Big Horn), yet they showed instances of white violence against Indians (i.e. the massacres at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee) with full gory detail. It's what liberal directors do best: Twist historical fact to suit whatever their agenda is.

[JoeGar]

Spielberg has publicized the fact that the movie is fiction, that some conversations and events never occurred, and that he purposely tried to make the Palentinians and Israelis equally wrong in the film.