“Munich” did poorly at the box office, especially by the standards of a Spielberg film, but then, what did the number crunchers expect? It was released in the anxious, skittery years of George W. Bush’s war on terrorism, when America was just over four raw years away from the attacks of Sept. 11, and here was a film giving airtime to the viewpoints of terrorists. Mr. Kushner was attacked at the time for perceived Palestinian sympathies. Reflecting on the film’s reception, he has said that movie critics helped save the film by steering the conversation, again and again, back to the value of art.
The value of art is always what I recognized in “Munich.” But when I revisit the film now, I am not seeking assurance; I don’t believe there is any to be had. I don’t look for hope either. If that’s available, I haven’t yet found it, either on the movie screen or in the headlines or from the mouths of commentators. What I’m looking for — what I think many of us are looking for — is a keenness of insight and an understanding of the pain of living with moral grayness that the best art can provide. And that’s what I find now in “Munich.”
I no longer have the movie-critic words to describe the haunting effects of the film. But there’s a moment at the end that was considered, oh, I don’t know, possibly tacky at the time and certainly shocking. Avner, having successfully completed his vengeful mission and now living in Brooklyn with his wife and child and still reeling from the toll his assassination assignment has taken on his soul, meets up with his Mossad handler, Ephraim, played by Geoffrey Rush, on a stretch of Queens waterfront. The two men talk. Despite their differences about the place of Israel in their hearts, Avner invites Ephraim, a fellow Jew, to dinner in his home. Ephraim declines. And as Avner walks away, the camera pans matter-of-factly across the skyline, where the twin towers of the World Trade Center still stand.
In 2005, with memories of Sept. 11 still fresh and just a year after images of prisoner abuse in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison were made public, the image cut like a knife of grief. The message was unmissable: Violence begets vengeance begets violence, and the road to further tragedy stretches to the horizon. That road leads to right now: Israeli hostages who are still in mortal danger and untold thousands of Palestinians dead.
At first sight, the glimpse at the end of “Munich” of a skyline that no longer existed reopened a raw wound. It was supposed to. It still does.
So I watch it again. And recite the Kaddish by heart.