Flick of The Day: Munich

Steven Spielberg has attempted historic epics before with film's like Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan but rarely has he examined an issue without voicing a point of view on an event. With today's flick of the day, Munich, Spielberg does exactly that, neither questioning the reasoning behind the Israeli actions nor portraying the Palestinians as heartless, faceless evildoers. It is a meditation on the effects of seeking revenge and of the moral consequences of doing so.

Munich (Widescreen Edition)

Produced in the same year as Spielberg's blockbuster remake of War of the Worlds, much as he had done in 1993 with Jurassic Park and Schindlers List, Munich is a sombre thriller if such a thing is possible. Opening with a meticulous recreation of the events that occurred at the Munich Olympics in September 1972, while this has been done before in Kevin Macdonald's excellent documentary One Day in September, it is still well done. The use of news footage is particularly striking, given that it was sports reporters covering the Olympic Games which largely documented the hostage situation. After the massacre unfolds and the death of the Black September terrorists, largely due to a botched German rescue attempt, the film outlines the resolution of the Israeli government under Golda Meir to track down and kill those responsible. Mossad agent Avner, played by Eric Bana with a ruthless intensity, is recruited by Geoffrey Rush to lead the team. The team chosen are interestingly not professional assassins, but ordinary Israelis with military training and the kind of special skills required for the job including Daniel Craig and Ciaran Hinds. Both excel in their roles, each character given a background to work with. The fact that they are for want of a better word, normal, is what makes this film interesting. How they deal with the effects of having to devote their lives to seeking revenge and of having to do the actual killing is what drives much of the film. Each deals with it differently but as the story unfolds, it weighs on them all.

Coming in at just under 3 hours in length, the film feels over-long at times but then as Avner and co jump from locale to locale, taking out their targets along the way, it is thrilling and largely holds your attention. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film is that Spielberg seems to take the opinion that both the Palestinian terrorists and the Mossad assassins are morally equivalent or at the very least offers this for our decision. In one entertaining scene, the undercover agents enter a safe house they have hired only to find it double booked by a group of Palestinians. Pretending to be fellow revolutionaries, they fall into conversation and Avner and their leader discuss the wishes of the Palestinian cause. I suppose ultimately the question at the heart of the film is whether it is right or not for a State to seek revenge in the form of an eye for an eye?

Ephraim: We have 11 Palestinian names. Each had a hand in planning Munich. You're going to kill them, 11 men, one by one. They're all in Europe now. You'll stay there as long as it takes. Europe only, not the Arab countries. That's for us, not you. And not Eastern Bloc. Don't upset the Russians. Who needs it? You'll have no contact with us. 

Avner: You're not going to give me any information? 

Ephraim: We deposit money from a fund that doesn't exist into a box we don't know about, in a bank we never set foot in. We can't help you because we never heard of you before. You'll do what the terrorists do. You think they report back to home base? They don't. We want them dead.

By posing this question, Spielberg is very much asking the audience to look at the events of today, where for the past decade the US government has pursued the planners of 9/11 in just such a manner as the Israelis. If the events of the past days have been proof of anything, it is that America has been as equally as effective as Israel in this quest for retribution.

The film is not without its flaws, in one of the closing scenes, flashback footage of the massacre is inter-cut with Avner making love to his wife implying that he is haunted and seeking solace in his wife. However, given that the footage is not news footage and bare in mind that Avner was never at Munich, what are we to draw from this? How could he be so haunted by imagery he never saw?

Avner: If these people committed crimes we should have arrested them. Like Eichmann. 

Ephraim: If these guys live, Israelis die. Whatever doubts you have Avner, you know this is true. 

[Avner walks away] 

Ephraim: You did well but you're unhappy. 

Avner: I killed seven men. 

Ephraim: Not Salameh. We'll get him of course.

In the end, this is a satisfying and beautifully shot examination of the after effects of the Black September massacre. Dealing with complex and dense issues, it makes for an entertaining if at times slow film. It also never comes to a resolution of the question it poses about the morality of state-sponsored revenge. Well worth a look.

Flick of The Day: The King's Speech

I was initially wary of seeing this film, even though it has been nominated for 12 Oscars, mainly because it struck me as another one of those film's which keep the British film industry alive, being as it is the sick man of European cinema. It ticks all the boxes of such a film. Historical? Check. The Royal Family? Check. Classically trained actors in all the major roles? Check. Its got Jacobi and Gambon!

However, I was drawn to see it, based on word of mouth regarding the performance of Colin Firth as King George VI, Bertie to his friends and the King of the title. In a deeply affecting performance, he manages to capture the fear and frustration of those with a speech impediment. Watching him struggle to simply form sentences is difficult, for is speech not one of the fundamental abilities that makes humans as we are?

When we eventually get to the root of Bertie's ailment, you can only come to the conclusion that he suffered a very terrible childhood. The kind you would not wish on anyone and that it made him the flawed adult he was.

In one scene, he finds peace in simply making model aeroplanes, something he was forbidden to do as a child.

Firth is the main reason to see this movie but he is not the only reason. As I've said, there are fine actors scattered throughout. Helena Bonham Carter has great fun with the role of Bertie's wife and Geoffrey Rush brings his natural charm to the role of the speech therapist. He believes quite deeply that a speech impediment is something that can be overcome. through his unorthodox methods.

The film is to my knowledge largely historically accurate, though the idea of Guy Pearce as Colin Firth's older brother is laughable. The only criticism that might be levelled at the film is the implication that appeasement was only practiced by Neville Chamberlain and Edward VIII. It was a widespread view, particularly in the Royal Family. Winston Churchill was very much the outsider.

All in all, I enjoyed this film, though I don't feel it will be remembered as one of the great achievement's in cinema but Colin Firth's performance stands alone as one of the finest of the year. I hope he wins.

Flick of The Day: The Life & Death Of Peter Sellers

A studied portrait of a very unpleasant man. That could sum up any number of biographical pictures but it seems most apt for this, the life of the incomparable Peter Sellers. 

It is difficult to judge a man based on a film but whatever genius Sellers had as a performer, it was surely outweighed by how poorly he treated those in his life. Geoffrey Rush is magnificent in this role however, Sellers seems not to be a real adult at all, but a small child with no sense of his own personality, forever playing a character. Something which Sellers himself admits midway through. At various points in the film, Rush breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience as various characters from Sellers life such as his hen pecked Father. 

Emily Watson gives another dignified performance as Sellers first wife, whom he left in an attempt to woo Sophia Lauren. Unfortunately, this is just one of a number of incidents which leave you in no doubt that Sellers is a bit of a cad. The film does however attempt to get to the bottom of why Sellers was that way. An overbearing mother undoubtedly played its part. In one particularly cruel scene, his father lies dying in hospital for a week before Sellers is told, lest it affect his career.

The Pink Panther does of course play a pivotal role in the film, for it was the role of Inspector Clouseau which came to define Sellers, though he seemed to take no joy from it. This is quite a running theme throughout his life. An inability to be happy with anything be it success or affairs of the heart. Indeed, as times move on, his depression and demons overtake him, and at the end, there is nothing left. Not to over emphasis a cliché, but his greatest gift, his ability to inhabit a role to perfection, was also his greatest flaw. It ate away whatever personality he had to begin with.

Ultimately a sad tale of a complex and at times not very nice man, though a fascinating one all the same. It's really worth your time because for all his many flaws, he was a truly entertaining character and the film is filled with little incidents and anecdotes that keep it moving along; his development of the Clouseau character into a major role, his relationship with his directors, giants of the age such as Blake Edwards and Stanley Kubrick. 

Often the man makes the role, for Peter Sellers, the man was the role.