Taken as a whole, I find Spielberg’s work pretty unsatisfying; despite the technical mastery, it’s so often simply not good enough. Not that his recent run of films – for all the flaws, failed endings, or outright failures – is anything less than interesting, but for me his least successful films (The Terminal) share much of the same problems as the acclaimed “masterpieces” (Schindler’s List).
So, full credit to Spielberg for the consistent success of Munich. Perhaps we have Tony Kushner to thank more for the effective structure (the recurring and ever-expanding flashbacks), the dark tone, the moral qualms, and the absolutely right ending, but Spielberg has delivered a great piece of cinema (if a touch over-long). The thriller aspects are superb (there’s even an explicit illustration of Hitchcock’s famous definition of suspense as the audience knowing there’s a ticking bomb about to go off – without killing off the child as the Master himself did in Sabotage), but the film is so much more than that. I don’t know how historically accurate this depiction of these Israelis’ moral dilemma is, but obviously it’s the core of the film, and it’s an important message and an important film to make today. For my taste, there was a bit too much Spielbergian close-to-the-mawkish dwelling on Avner’s child towards the end of the film (but my wife assures me that Eric Bana striding through the streets of New York with his kid in his arms was indescribably sexy). And the simply bizarre Michael Lonsdale sub-plot succeeded in adding a further enriching layer to a superb film.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
28 Feb 2006 12:48 PM | Submit Comment