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selenakRegarding BSG 2.14, Black Market: I liked the Zarek scene(s) and the one between Roslin and Baltar. End of review, for obvious reasons.
I also watched Munich.
As several critics have noted, it's an intriguing mixture of success and failure in artistic terms. The morality play aspect of it worked for me, and I think that's where Tony Kushner's writing abilities were used best; I also liked that ultimately the film didn't have a clear answer whether or not Our Heroes did the right-and-necessary thing. Which I tend to credit Spielberg with, bearing the end of Angels in America in mind, with Joe the Republican firmly condemmed and expelled from paradise while the other characters are finding solace in each other. By contrast, Munich has arguably the darkest ending of a Spielberg movie, with one possible exception. Because Avner doesn't find solace and peace with his family once they have reunited. Mind you, the entire cross cutting sequence between flashbacks to the Munich killings and Avner having sex with his wife fails horribly - I get what Spielberg wanted to do here, but he didn't pull it off cinematically. I guess you have to be David Cronenberg to manage that one. Ironically, Spielberg did manage to get a similar point across beautifully in that one possible exception I mentioned earlier, the underrated Empire of the Sun. When Jim, at the end, is found by his parents again, he doesn't joyfully rush into their arms. Christian Bale as a child pulls of a great performance in this movie anyway, because he's the antithesis of the cute and adorable child hero, but at this point, Jim has just seen too much, experienced to much, and the close up of his frozen face and his eyes with their utterly un-child-like stare while his mother hugs him says it all. When he finally closes his eyes, it' stoo late to provide viewer comfort.
However, Munich doesn't end with that failed scene but with the meeting between Avner and his former handler, Avner not accepting the assurance that the killings were justified anymore, and his terse reply "we will never have peace" when the handler says that if they're just strong enough, ruthless enough peace will be achieved. And then of course the already famous/infamous last picture, the New York skyline with the World Trade Towers while Avner leaves his handler behind. Yes, it's very much a post-9/11 movie, despite the 70s setting. Not because Spielberg equates the Munich murders with the destruction of the World Trade Towers, but because he equates the "how to respond to terrorism" questions posed after both events, and like I said, he doesn't give an answer.
Avner aside, the rest of the Mossad team remain pretty much cyphers, despite the excellent actors hired. No idea whether this is due to the script or the direction. Kushner can do ensembles, Spielberg can do ensembles (E.T., for example, doesn't just bring Eliot and E.T. alive but makes Eliot's brother and sister and mother distinct and memorable as well), but here they chose to concentrate just on the main character. Who, lo and behold, does not have daddy issues. He has mommy issues instead. (Thank you, Tony; that is such a refreshing change in the Spielbergian oeuvre, and I'm sure it's because of you.) There is probably a corralation between Avner's wife saying early on that his mother neglected him and handed him over to the state and now he sees Israel as his mother, Golda Meir ordering vengeance and Avner's ultimate decision to live in exile, but at least it's not hammered down with anvils. Anyway. Avner preparing food for his team - being the "mother" himself, if you like - is a recurring theme. More food each time, and it gets less and less eaten each time. You go from the first hit, where Avner and companion hesitate and have shaking hands until they shoot, to the last assassination shown in detail, of the Dutch woman, which is arguably one of the most disturbing death sequences Spielberg ever filmed. (Yes, I include the butchery in the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan. For all its celebrated realism, that one might let American soldiers die and get hurt in a horribly real way, but the Germans die the usual movie style sans noise and close ups.) When Avner tries to cover her up afterwards and his comrade pushes her bathrobe back again so that her nude, bleeding body is lying there without protection and dignity, it makes a stronger comment about the dehumanization that has been going on with them than the dialogue in the meal scene afterwards.
And yet, for all this excercise in moral ambiguity and darkness, John Le Carré style, there is one scene in the film that is pure early optimistic Spielberg, and I can't help myself, I find it incredibly endearing despite or because of the fact it's such a contrast to the rest, as if wandered in from another movie. Especially since the cinema geek in me also knows it's a critical homage to a classic, to wit, the scene in Casablanca where the emigrés singing the Marsaillaise drowns out the Nazis singing Kein Schöner Land. That scene was a clear black and white (literary) feel good rabble rousing thing, the bad guys being defeated by the good guys despite the good guys being at this point of the film powerless and persecuted. In Munich, Avner and his team through some plot contrivance end up in the same room as a team of Palestinians (who believe Avner & Co. to be RAF - that would be Baader-Meinhof gang to you English speaking folk, the Rote Armee Fraktion, not the Royal Airforce - and IRA folk). A Palestinian switches on the radio to play an Arab song. Steve (aka The Blond One) changes stations so it plays a chanson instead. The Palestinian switches it back. And then Steve, otherwise the hardliner of the team, compromises, switches to a third station, which plays swing, the Palestinian laughs, and everyone relaxes. Yes, it's breathtakingly using rose-coloured glasses, blindly optimistic, what have you, but I suddenly had the wish to hug Spielberg at this point.
Speaking of the Palestinians. The film tries to steer a middle way here. On the one hand, except for that very last scene between Avner and his handler, the question as to whether the targets in question actually were involved in the Munich killings or with any terrorism at all is never raised; the audience along with Avner is invited to believe they are unquestionably guilty. (Whereas in fact at least one assassination in the wake of Munich, in Sweden, managed to get the wrong person because of a name confusion. It's not in this movie.) On the other, Spielberg goes out of his way not to demonize them, which I take it is one of the reasons he got flamed for this film. The first Palestinian to be executed is shown to hold forth on his translation of the Arabian Nights into Italian, goes shopping, is friendly and relaxed towards the shop owner, and then gets killed holding household goods. The second is featured as a loving father with an adorable little daughter (tm). Then there is the one Avner accidentally ends up having a conversation with, exhibiting friendliness and humour. And so forth. Now due to Spielberg using flashbacks to the original deaths in Munich again and again throughout the film and the movie never questioning, until the end, that these people are indeed involved and guilty of these original murders, it's not like this whitewashes the Palestinians. But it makes them distinctly different from usual movie villains and makes the point that they're human.
(You hear the Palestinian pov twice, once in an interview assassination target No.2 gives and once during said room sharing sequence where Avner and the leader of the Palestinians, Ali, go out for a smoke. It comes across as somewhat hypocritical in the former case, as target No.2 lives in a rich flat in Paris, which makes talking about refuge camps a tad incredible, but as sincere in the case of the Palestinian team leader. Whether it's Kushner or Spielberg, the way Ali twists "they'll see you as behaving like beasts" to "yes, and maybe then the world will wonder how they treat us in our cages to make us that way" is a rethoric masterstroke.)
So, all in all: not Spielberg's best movie. In parts a failure. But definitely the one where he challenged himself most, and worth watching.
However, after a bad episode and a mixed affair, I long for some perfection. And thus, before I have to return to working for a living, I'll put in an Angel season 4 episode or two. Best season of the show. I love it to bits.
I also watched Munich.
As several critics have noted, it's an intriguing mixture of success and failure in artistic terms. The morality play aspect of it worked for me, and I think that's where Tony Kushner's writing abilities were used best; I also liked that ultimately the film didn't have a clear answer whether or not Our Heroes did the right-and-necessary thing. Which I tend to credit Spielberg with, bearing the end of Angels in America in mind, with Joe the Republican firmly condemmed and expelled from paradise while the other characters are finding solace in each other. By contrast, Munich has arguably the darkest ending of a Spielberg movie, with one possible exception. Because Avner doesn't find solace and peace with his family once they have reunited. Mind you, the entire cross cutting sequence between flashbacks to the Munich killings and Avner having sex with his wife fails horribly - I get what Spielberg wanted to do here, but he didn't pull it off cinematically. I guess you have to be David Cronenberg to manage that one. Ironically, Spielberg did manage to get a similar point across beautifully in that one possible exception I mentioned earlier, the underrated Empire of the Sun. When Jim, at the end, is found by his parents again, he doesn't joyfully rush into their arms. Christian Bale as a child pulls of a great performance in this movie anyway, because he's the antithesis of the cute and adorable child hero, but at this point, Jim has just seen too much, experienced to much, and the close up of his frozen face and his eyes with their utterly un-child-like stare while his mother hugs him says it all. When he finally closes his eyes, it' stoo late to provide viewer comfort.
However, Munich doesn't end with that failed scene but with the meeting between Avner and his former handler, Avner not accepting the assurance that the killings were justified anymore, and his terse reply "we will never have peace" when the handler says that if they're just strong enough, ruthless enough peace will be achieved. And then of course the already famous/infamous last picture, the New York skyline with the World Trade Towers while Avner leaves his handler behind. Yes, it's very much a post-9/11 movie, despite the 70s setting. Not because Spielberg equates the Munich murders with the destruction of the World Trade Towers, but because he equates the "how to respond to terrorism" questions posed after both events, and like I said, he doesn't give an answer.
Avner aside, the rest of the Mossad team remain pretty much cyphers, despite the excellent actors hired. No idea whether this is due to the script or the direction. Kushner can do ensembles, Spielberg can do ensembles (E.T., for example, doesn't just bring Eliot and E.T. alive but makes Eliot's brother and sister and mother distinct and memorable as well), but here they chose to concentrate just on the main character. Who, lo and behold, does not have daddy issues. He has mommy issues instead. (Thank you, Tony; that is such a refreshing change in the Spielbergian oeuvre, and I'm sure it's because of you.) There is probably a corralation between Avner's wife saying early on that his mother neglected him and handed him over to the state and now he sees Israel as his mother, Golda Meir ordering vengeance and Avner's ultimate decision to live in exile, but at least it's not hammered down with anvils. Anyway. Avner preparing food for his team - being the "mother" himself, if you like - is a recurring theme. More food each time, and it gets less and less eaten each time. You go from the first hit, where Avner and companion hesitate and have shaking hands until they shoot, to the last assassination shown in detail, of the Dutch woman, which is arguably one of the most disturbing death sequences Spielberg ever filmed. (Yes, I include the butchery in the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan. For all its celebrated realism, that one might let American soldiers die and get hurt in a horribly real way, but the Germans die the usual movie style sans noise and close ups.) When Avner tries to cover her up afterwards and his comrade pushes her bathrobe back again so that her nude, bleeding body is lying there without protection and dignity, it makes a stronger comment about the dehumanization that has been going on with them than the dialogue in the meal scene afterwards.
And yet, for all this excercise in moral ambiguity and darkness, John Le Carré style, there is one scene in the film that is pure early optimistic Spielberg, and I can't help myself, I find it incredibly endearing despite or because of the fact it's such a contrast to the rest, as if wandered in from another movie. Especially since the cinema geek in me also knows it's a critical homage to a classic, to wit, the scene in Casablanca where the emigrés singing the Marsaillaise drowns out the Nazis singing Kein Schöner Land. That scene was a clear black and white (literary) feel good rabble rousing thing, the bad guys being defeated by the good guys despite the good guys being at this point of the film powerless and persecuted. In Munich, Avner and his team through some plot contrivance end up in the same room as a team of Palestinians (who believe Avner & Co. to be RAF - that would be Baader-Meinhof gang to you English speaking folk, the Rote Armee Fraktion, not the Royal Airforce - and IRA folk). A Palestinian switches on the radio to play an Arab song. Steve (aka The Blond One) changes stations so it plays a chanson instead. The Palestinian switches it back. And then Steve, otherwise the hardliner of the team, compromises, switches to a third station, which plays swing, the Palestinian laughs, and everyone relaxes. Yes, it's breathtakingly using rose-coloured glasses, blindly optimistic, what have you, but I suddenly had the wish to hug Spielberg at this point.
Speaking of the Palestinians. The film tries to steer a middle way here. On the one hand, except for that very last scene between Avner and his handler, the question as to whether the targets in question actually were involved in the Munich killings or with any terrorism at all is never raised; the audience along with Avner is invited to believe they are unquestionably guilty. (Whereas in fact at least one assassination in the wake of Munich, in Sweden, managed to get the wrong person because of a name confusion. It's not in this movie.) On the other, Spielberg goes out of his way not to demonize them, which I take it is one of the reasons he got flamed for this film. The first Palestinian to be executed is shown to hold forth on his translation of the Arabian Nights into Italian, goes shopping, is friendly and relaxed towards the shop owner, and then gets killed holding household goods. The second is featured as a loving father with an adorable little daughter (tm). Then there is the one Avner accidentally ends up having a conversation with, exhibiting friendliness and humour. And so forth. Now due to Spielberg using flashbacks to the original deaths in Munich again and again throughout the film and the movie never questioning, until the end, that these people are indeed involved and guilty of these original murders, it's not like this whitewashes the Palestinians. But it makes them distinctly different from usual movie villains and makes the point that they're human.
(You hear the Palestinian pov twice, once in an interview assassination target No.2 gives and once during said room sharing sequence where Avner and the leader of the Palestinians, Ali, go out for a smoke. It comes across as somewhat hypocritical in the former case, as target No.2 lives in a rich flat in Paris, which makes talking about refuge camps a tad incredible, but as sincere in the case of the Palestinian team leader. Whether it's Kushner or Spielberg, the way Ali twists "they'll see you as behaving like beasts" to "yes, and maybe then the world will wonder how they treat us in our cages to make us that way" is a rethoric masterstroke.)
So, all in all: not Spielberg's best movie. In parts a failure. But definitely the one where he challenged himself most, and worth watching.
However, after a bad episode and a mixed affair, I long for some perfection. And thus, before I have to return to working for a living, I'll put in an Angel season 4 episode or two. Best season of the show. I love it to bits.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 12:41 pm (UTC)Define "anvils", because I felt it was pretty much hammered to death here.
And Spielberg made up the talk with the Palestinians in the not-so-safe-house and never gave Avner the proper answers, such as, oh, there had actually been Jews in Palestine for 4,000 years? (And the solution is what, let the Israelis move to Brooklyn like Avner and his wife? How different is that from Ahmadinejad wanting them to move to Carinthia?)
Gah, I hated this movie. It's actually rather well-made, but I don't find solace in the fact that Spielberg didn't let Kushner (who is a terrific writer) push all of his agenda. And I agree that the last Eros/Thanatos scene does NOT work.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 01:26 pm (UTC)Last Eros/Thanatos scene: yep, an illustration of not to do that. I strongly suspect this might be because Spielberg can't do sex in general, but like I said, he could have made the same point in a different way (see Empire of the Sun).
no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 01:43 pm (UTC)No, because it's only part of the argument, the Sartrian one; Jews are created by anti-Semitism; by the others. It completely dismisses actual Jewish identity and the continuity of history.
I like Gila Almagor, who played the character she was given very well; but I don't like this Volumnia Israeli mother at all; and I find her rather caricatural.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 01:53 pm (UTC)Empire of the Sun is a favorite of mine, and I agree that it's underrated. It has so many background things that are lovely and creepy at the same time, while being referential, which is sort of a favorite sandwich of mine. The giant Gone With the Wind poster in the street. Jim reading what happened in the spilled powder. And the entire Cadillac of the Sky scene. If it's comparable to Empire of the Sun, then I must see it.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 05:50 pm (UTC)Re: Empire of the Sun, I think my favourite scene was Jim trying to revive the Japanese pilot. This, long before Schindler's List, was when Spielberg's movies grew adult.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 03:34 pm (UTC)I did think the Baltar/Lee scene had its moments.
My new theory is that if the fleet were discworld, Zarek would be Vetinari (at least the youthful version) and of course that made me happy.
A pox on unnecessary flashbacks!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 09:17 pm (UTC)Do you have any suggestions for casting the rest of the gang?
no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-31 03:29 am (UTC)You know, I was thinking it would be great to have an icon that says, "End of review, for obvious reasons." Maybe with Jed Leland on it. May I quote you?
no subject
Date: 2006-01-31 06:01 am (UTC)Quote away, and Jed Leland would be a perfect choice for such an icon.*g*
no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-31 07:04 am (UTC)I cannot be controlled around movie recs! :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 08:24 pm (UTC)This said, there were interesting parts, particularly the murder of the prostitute and the gang's spiral down into inhumanity, as well as the scene with Avner and his mother.
I enjoyed it, but I didn't think it was a great film, so I must more or less concur with your assessment.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 02:42 am (UTC)(Also, since I seem to find myself in the happy position of going through Selenak archives, could you point me towards your post about the real-life Nazis? I think I may have even asked this of you before, and if so, I'm sorry for having a terrible memory.)