Munich, a film by Steven Spielberg

On Sunday, after an early start at the swimming pool and the gym (you don't believe it, I don't either), a morning spent at the Stade Olympique learning about and admiring Vann Molyvann's architecture, I undertook to watch Steven Spielberg's movie "Munich".

With a running time of one hundred and sixty four minutes, it is indeed an undertaking to follow Spielberg into Tony Kushner and Eric Roth's script based on George Jonas's book "Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team".

The film starts with a reminder of the hostage-taking at the Munich 1972 Olympic Games in which 11 Israeli athletes were targeted and eventually killed.

I will avoid using the term "terrorist", for the more neutral "armed activist", as we all know that someone's "terrorist" is someone else's "freedom fighter" and conversely.

Is it an effective policy to avenge the victims or does it only radicalize your ennemies?
Is it right to kill activists who have killed your countrymen?
Can you still claim that you are better than your ennemies if you use their methods?
How far should one go to serve his or her country?
What is the financial price and the human price it costs a state to kill ennemy activists?
How does a secret agent know that he or she is targetting really harmful people? The information he got might have been fabricated and he might be about to kill innocent people...
Can one expect to hunt and kill with the most sophisticated techniques without in turn becoming paranoiac?
If you're a married man, feeling lonely, away from your family, in a hotel, should you accept when a beautiful unknown woman asks you not to let her sleep alone?

The film asks all of these questions and answers none of them in a conclusive way (except for the last one: I don't want to spoil the movie for you but the short answer is "no, you shouldn't"!)

Add more questions to these about the legitimacy of the State of Israel and about whether the Jews renounce their soul when they create a state which will inevitably be responsible for injustice and wrongdoings, including murders of innocent people - and murders of non-innocent people, whether that will at the end of the day be labeled wrongdoing or not.

You get the idea: if you look for easy answers don't go out of your way to watch this movie. The film made a strong impression on me because the acting is very good and the director managed to convey the points in the action, without too many artificial dialogues nor situations.

PS:

To read the opinion of Walter Reich who thinks Spielberg does give answers (and the wrong ones) through what he doesn't tell, read this Washington Post Op-Ed.

Joseph