UPDATED: MUNICH (and More)

This is the time of the year when one desperately needs relief from the fare television offers. It’s essential to make a trip or two to Blockbuster during the holiday season for some mindless entertainment—which is a step up from the stomach-turning, sappy, deeply silly Xmas films whose screening began as early as late in November.

As it is, it’s impossible to watch the assorted estrogen-oozing action dramas and crime series inflicted on the TV viewer. The phony heroine lords it over meek meterosexuals with fussy falsettos. Men know their place. Dare-devil women run the show, which makes the show dull, because 90 pounds of botoxic, silicone-plumped flesh in stilettos can’t run very fast (in real life, and I’m a sucker for reality). And you just know that back on terra firma, the 200 pounder she’s cuffing with seeming ease would have flung her as far as the equator, or coshed her to death.

A leading man is invariably a mentalist (I don’t know what that is), a gentle doctor suffering from low-sperm count, or a buffoon (“Burn Notice”).

Did you know that Daniel Wroughton Craig is quite a capable actor? Since I’m not a fan of the film industry, discovering that the latest James Bond is more than a Pierce Brosnan (although not nearly as good looking) or a Timothy Dalton and Roger Moore was a pleasant surprise.

I mention Craig, as we were watching Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg, and based on a book by Canadian journalist George Jonas, Barbara Amiel’s first husband.

Munich has a decent script and actors, their main attribute being that they are not American, so the acting is understated, not ego-centered and embarrassing. A bit of that unique Israeli humor is captured occasionally. Munich “shows how a squad of assassins, led by former Mossad agent Avner (Eric Bana), track down and murder a list of Black September members thought to be responsible for the eleven Israeli athletes’ murders. The second part of the film, which depicts the Israeli government’s response, has been debated a great deal by film critics and newspaper columnists. Spielberg refers to the film’s second part as “historical fiction,” saying it is inspired by the actual Israeli operations which are now known as Operation Wrath of God.”

Daniel Craig plays Steve, the South African get-away driver. He manages a heavy South African accent the likes I’ve never heard before. At first, I did not recognize him and thought Craig was an obscure actor from the Old Country. From their non-existent acting repertoire, younger American actors exclude accents. (It’s “too much like hard work, besides; doesn’t’ everyone speak English with an American accent?”) An East European dialect in “Law and Order SVU” sounds like the “Direct TV” commercial.

The depiction of the Munich massacre is hard to take for those of us who remember the lack of German security, the free pass that government gave the butchers, and the same peoples’ decision to continue the fun and games in the aftermath of the gruesome murders.

An excellent series also well-worth renting is “In Treatment.” Reading the credits, I saw the words, “Betipul,” which is Hebrew for “In treatment.” It figures that these nuanced portraits of people in therapy were adapted for the small screen from a foreign script. It has nothing of the Oprah, Phil filth—the two charlatans whose worldviews guide interpersonal relationships in the US.

Wikipedia confirms that, “The program’s format, script and opening theme are based on, often being word for word translations of, Hagai Levi’s successful Israeli series BeTipul, which won every possible award for a drama series at the Israeli Academy Awards.” I seldom watch TV becasue I get so bored. “In Treatment” is riveting TV. It’s deep but not labored.

UPDATE (Dec. 18): My thanks to Nora for fleshing out the context of Munich’s release. You can see how far behind I am in my film viewing. As we were watching, I did mutter to my husband about the facts that had been omitted (see above). It’s my understanding, however, that both Spielberg and Jonas are pro-Israel. Jonas most certainly is. And Spielberg is behind an enormous Holocaust project, so he is most sensitive to the arguments for Israel’s founding and survival. The Palestinians were definitely the butchers of the film; Israelis were the bunglers—I did get the impression of a inexpert mission, but then technology was primitive in those days.

To repeat, the Israelis were the sympathetic parties in the plot. Any statement to the contrary in the German press must have been a product of that press’ wish-fulfillment projections. Some of “the other side” came through in the rather smug, second-rate arguments presented during a chance meeting between the Israeli protagonist and a Palestinian terrorist. The Israeli came out on top.

All in all, it’s a decent effort. The horrific replays of the Munich massacre displayed the heroism of some of the Israeli athletes. Perhaps not enough.