Spielberg defends his 'Munich'

'I knew the minefield was there," says Steven Spielberg, describing the storm of controversy over his new film "Munich." He has been attacked on three fronts, for being anti-Israeli, being anti-Palestinian, and being neither -- which is, those critics say, the sin of "moral equivalency."

"I wasn't naive in accepting this challenge," he says about his film, which begins with the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympiad, and follows a secret Israeli team assigned by prime minister Golda Meir to hunt down those responsible and assassinate them.

"I knew I was going to be losing friends when I took on the subject," he told me during a phone conversation Thursday afternoon. "I am also making new friends." The film, which opened on Friday, had already generated fiery discussion from those who've seen it in previews -- or not seen it, but objected to the very idea of it.

In his film, a character named Avner, played by Eric Bana, heads the assassination squad, and begins to question the morality and utility of his actions. Others in the film articulate a defense of the strategy of revenge. Spielberg says that his film deliberately supplies no simple answers.

"It would make people more comfortable if I made a film that said all targeted assassination is bad, or good, but the movie doesn't take either of those positions. It refuses to. Many of those pundits on the left and right would love the film to land somewhere definite. It puts a real burden on the audience to figure out for themselves how they feel about these issues. There are no easy answers to the most complex story of the last 50 years."

Spielberg said he has been particularly struck by charges that his film makes him "no friend of Israel."

"I am as truly pro-Israeli as you can possibly imagine. From the day I became morally and politically conscious of the importance of the state of Israel and its necessity to exist, I have believed that not just Israel, but the rest of the world, needs Israel to exist.

"But there is a constituency that nothing you can say or do will ever satisfy. The prism through which they see things is so profound and deeply rooted and so much a part of their own belief system that if you challenge that, you challenge everything they believe in. They say the film is too critical of Israel. The film has been shown to Palestinians who think it is too pro-Israel and doesn't give the them enough room to air their grievances.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is, if this movie bothers you, frightens you, upsets you, maybe it's not a good idea to ignore that. Maybe you need to think about why you're having that reaction."

Spielberg, who is the most popular filmmaker in modern history, has regularly chosen to make serious and thoughtful films, some of limited appeal, along with his box-office blockbusters. It is striking that the director of "Jurassic Park" (1993) and the Indiana Jones movies is also the director of "Schindler's List" (1993), "The Color Purple" (1985), "Amistad" (1997) and now "Munich."

"Some of my critics are asking how Spielberg, this Hollywood liberal who makes dinosaur movies, can say anything serious about this subject that baffles so many smart people. What they're basically saying is, 'You disagree with us in a big public way, and we want you to shut up, and we want this movie to go back in the can.' That's a nefarious attempt to make people plug up their ears. That's not Jewish, it's not democratic, and it's bad for everyone -- especially in a democratic society."

Yet what is he saying that has people so disturbed? Careful attention to the film itself suggests that it's not so much what he says as that he dares even to open up the Middle East for discussion.

"My film refuses to be a pamphlet," Spielberg said. "My screenwriter Tony Kushner and I were hoping to make it a visceral, emotional and intellectual experience, combined in such a way that it will help you get in touch with what you feel are the questions the film poses. He said he was taught by his parents, his rabbi and his faith that discussion "is the highest good -- it's Talmudic."

But what about the issue of "moral equivalence," the charge that he equates the Israeli and Palestinian causes, when the rightness of one (or the other) is seen as not debatable?

"Frankly, I think that's a stupid charge. The people who attack the movie based on 'moral equivalence' are some of the same people who say diplomacy itself is an exercise in moral equivalence, and that war is the only answer. That the only way to fight terrorism is to dehumanize the terrorists by asking no questions about who they are and where they come from.

"What I believe is, every act of terrorism requires a strong response, but we must also pay attention to the causes. That's why we have brains and the power to think passionately. Understanding does not require approval. Understanding is not the same as inaction. Understanding is a very muscular act. If I'm endorsing understanding and being attacked for that, then I am almost flattered."

In "Munich," there is a scene where Ali, a member of the Black September group that carried out the 1972 attacks, talks about his idea of a Palestinian homeland. Also a scene where Avner's mother, an original settler in Israel, defends their homeland. And a scene where an Israeli spymaster, played by Geoffrey Rush, provides a strong response to Avner's doubts.

"The whole Israeli-Palestinian idea of home suggests that there are two enormously powerful desires in competition," Spielberg said. "Two rights that are in a sense competing. You can't bring that to a simplicity. The film is asking you to surrender your simplicity on both sides and just look at it again. There was an article in USA Today by a Los Angeles rabbi, accusing me of 'blind pacifism.' That's interesting, because there is not any kind of blind pacifism within me anywhere, or in 'Munich.' I feel there was a justified need to respond to the terrorism in Munich, which is why I keep replaying images of the Munich massacre throughout the movie.

"In 1972, when Black September used the Olympics to announce themselves to the world, they broke all the rules and broke the boundaries of that conflict. Israel had to respond, or it would have been perceived as weak. I agree with Golda Meir's response. The thing you have to understand is, Munich is in Germany. And these were Jews dying all over again in Germany. For Israel, it was a national trauma. The Avner character, in the end, simply questions whether the response was right.

"Sometimes a response can provoke unintended consequences. The Rush character and Avner's mother reply. But people feel my voice is represented in Avner. The movie says I don't have an answer. I don't know anyone else who does. But I do know that the dialogue needs to be louder than the weapons."

Spielberg, a onetime boy wonder who directed his first commercial project at the age of 22, is now 59.

"I guess as I grow older," he said, "I just feel more responsibility for telling the stories that have some kind of larger meaning. Most of my movies sum everything up. I try to make movies to give audiences the least amount of homework and the most amount of pleasure. The majority of my movies have done that. But as I get older, I feel the burden of responsibility that comes along with such a powerful tool. I certainly have made movies by popular demand. There is a distinction between moviemaking and filmmaking. I want to do both."

He repeated that he was wounded by the charge that he is "no friend of Israel" because his film asks questions about Israeli policies. "This film is no more anti-Israel than a similar film which offered criticism of America is anti-America," he said. "Criticism is a form of love. I love America, and I'm critical of this administration. I love Israel, and I ask questions. Those who ask no questions may not be a country's best friends."

Is the Middle East without a solution? I asked. Will there be an endless cycle of terror and reprisal? What about the startling fact that Israel's entrenched political enemies, Ariel Sharon from the right, and Shimon Peres from the left, have resigned from their parties and joined in a new party that says it is seeking a path to peace?

"What I believe," Spielberg said, "is that there will be peace between Israelis and Palestinians in our lifetimes."

'Everybody is sort of saying they wish I would be silent' The telephone rang, and it was Steven Spielberg once again. After our previous conversation, I sent him a defense of "Munich" written by Jim Emerson, editor of rogerebert.com (his article appears on the Web site). It includes quotes from many Jews highly critical of Spielberg.

"[Emerson's article] brought together some sources and some criticisms I hadn't seen," Spielberg said, "and it made me want to be more specific about the responsibility of a Jewish artist.

"Everybody is sort of saying they wish I would be silent. What inspired me by what I read in Emerson's article is that silence is never good for anybody. When artists fall silent, it's scary. And when Jewish artists fall silent about Israel, it's maybe not so much because we think asking questions will do damage to Israel, but because we're intimidated by the shrillness and hysteria with which these questions are received sometimes.

"And I guess, because I'm a Jewish-American artist, that means that I'm not willing to shut up because somebody who claims to speak for the Jewish community tells me to. I guess I have a very deep faith in the intelligence and in the fairness and in the intellectual courage of the Jewish community, and I know that the questions I'm posing with 'Munich' are also questions that many Jews here and in Europe and Israel are asking.

"I think that Jews have always understood that the combination of art and advocacy are not the work for the shy or the timid, and that's why Jews down through history have produced so many important advocates -- because the Jewish community traditionally celebrates a variety of thought. I do not believe that 'Munich' will polarize and was not intended to polarize that community which I love."

I watched that film a couple of weeks ago and found it lacking in every way.
The story was lame as was the acting with Tom Cruise. Dakota Fanning was over the top and I wonder what will happen when she is no longer a child star.
Could have been a much better movie.
Munich as written by Kushner is probably a terrible movie and I will pass on it even on DVD.
Other than Harry Potter and Narnia, there aren't any good films out there this XMAS season and I will also probably pass on most them even on DVD.
Hollywood has really crashed and burn this season.

Why else did you like about the film? Beyond the razzle dazzle high production values of Spielberg? You saw no grasping for moral equivalency there? That the Palestinians and Jews are caught in an unfortunate "cycle of violence". That both sides are to blame. That one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter?

"I guess what I'm trying to say is, if this movie bothers you, frightens you, upsets you, maybe it's not a good idea to ignore that. Maybe you need to think about why you're having that reaction. Maybe you should take that opportunity to abandon your long-held moral convictions at the altar of my bloody-good palie propaganda. Oh, and I'm not a guilt-ridden self-hating Jew either. Remember that."

Just look at this, just look at it:

He could repeat the blood libel from the Protocols, and as long as he could find one muslim palie creep who said he was not sufficiently thorough in his telling it, he could say "well, I'm in the middle, and those who don't like my telling should step back and examine the prism through which they view the conflict..."

What an absolute tool.

I saw Munich, and was disgusted by it. Spielberg managed to take an instance of terrorist mass murder, and turn it into a desperate act by Arab freedom fighters who just want a homeland. The moral equivalance is depressing. These weren't troops guarding a border, or in a battle. These were innocent athletes, butchered only for being Jewish. It is a intellectual crime that Spielberg has committed by equivocating like this. Why the hell did he have to choose this subject to do so? It just makes me angry, and undermines Israel and by extension the United States in our resolve in the war on Islamic terror.

There are also numerous plot lines and dialogue that just never happened--totally invented or uncorroborated. Lines which cast the Arabs in a better light and the Israelis as wracked with self-doubt. The actual participants said these lines and actions never existed, but Spielberg doesn't seem to care about this foray into Oliver Stone-style fictionalization. The problem is, like the ignorant youths who gawked at "JFK", most people will just take this movie as fact, which is a deep shame.

Hope this helps:

"Sword of Gideon", directed by Michael Anderson and written by Chris Bryant, about a five-man commando unit unofficially sent out by the Israeli government to assassinate the 11 Palestinian terrorists identified as ringleaders in the murders of 11 Israeli Olympic team members.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6302027810/103-1783595-5996614?v=glance

"Not me. Revisionist history and moral equivalency 101. It's the Rodney King school of diplomacy in action: "Can't we all just get along" as seen through Spielberg's pre-adolescent lens."

BULLSEYE!

Saw the damn thing Friday evening and wish I hadn't wasted my money. Paid for a forgetable movie and overpriced popcorn and all the movie did was make my blood boil.

Speilberg, like most liberals, has lost his moral compass.

They had a segment on Fox and Friends about this movie the other day...

It was actually an interview with a guy that wrote a book about this massacre.

He said his book had the TRUTH about what REALLY happened after the terrorists slaughtered these innocent people. I cannot remember the name of the author or the book.... did anyone else see this piece on FOX?

I really would like to get that book...

"After watching this movie I have no clue why someone would call Spielberg a Hollywood idiot. Sure he's done stupid stuff but it's just a movie and take it for what it's worth."

For those too young or unfamiliar with the Munich Olympics in 1972 this will be much more than a movie. It will become, for them, their version of "history". The way Spielberg portrays it is not the way it happened.

I was twenty-five in 1972 and as an avid sports fan I followed the Olympic games with great interest. When the Palestinian terrorists kidnapped the Israeli athletes I was shocked. When the German and Oympic games officials totally botched the rescue attempt and the Palestinian terrorists executed those eleven men I was appalled as was most of the world who watched the events unfold on television. Most of us had never seen anyting like this and couldn't even imagine humans slaughtering other humans. It was a transformative experience for many. It was for me. To depict the terrorists as somehow morally equivalent to either the atheletes or their countrymen exacting revenge for their slaughter, is morally reprehesible.

Spielberg is a cowared not heroic. He, like most of Hollywood, will take on the Nazis because they're not around to threaten him. The Islamofacists however, are, and neither Spielberg nor Hollywood in general wants any part of them. As a case in point; where is the definitive movie on 9/11, huh? I hear we're going to get Oliver Stone's take on that. I wonder if it will portray utter moral equivalence as Spielberg did or if we'll be relegated to being the bad guys in that future epic.

Ridiculous. Masterpiece, my ass.

"The movie says I don't have an answer. I don't know anyone else who does. But I do know that the dialogue needs to be louder than the weapons."

Wonder if he would say the same about Nazis.

Sometimes the weapons need to be louder than the dialogue - because there can be no moral compromise with pure evil.

It would be interesting for Spielberg to explain how he is "critical of this administration" when it is notably pro-Israel. Clinton gave his all to the Palis (as did his evil wife). How does Spielberg get around that fact? Does he criticize the Clintons for their foreign relations idiocies?

But what about the issue of "moral equivalence," the charge that he equates the Israeli and Palestinian causes, when the rightness of one (or the other) is seen as not debatable? "Frankly, I think that's a stupid charge. The people who attack the movie based on 'moral equivalence' are some of the same people who say diplomacy itself is an exercise in moral equivalence, and that war is the only answer. That the only way to fight terrorism is to dehumanize the terrorists by asking no questions about who they are and where they come from.

No, you ASSHOLE..it's about not giving more fodder to the majority of people in this world who want to CUT YOUR HEAD OFF....Oh my God.

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