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T W E N T Y 4 O O - P O U N D G O R I L L A " E I N G able to make a film such as Munich, which confronts the audience with difficult, if not intractable, moral questions, is one of the major reasons Spielberg values his commercial success and jealously guards his independence. He fully anticipated the firestorm of animosity the film provoked. Before committing to direct it, he repeatedly turned down the project, which had been developed by producer Barry Mendel and brought to him by Kathleen Kennedy. He said, "I'll leave it to somebody else, somebody braver than me." But he has earned the ability to speak his mind on subjects that concern him and to delve into controversial themes as he sees fit. His willingness to risk his capital of audience goodwill and critical approval is one of his most admirable traits. "I couldn't live with myself being silent for the sake of maintaining my popularity," he concluded. "And I'm at an age right now where if I don't take risks, I lose respect for myself. And this was an important risk for me to take. . . . I just could feel that somehow this story had my name written all over it and I couldn't deny that. It just stirred up all these questions and arguments inside me." "Steven knew he was putting his head above the parapet," cast member Ciaran Hinds commented. "He must have been aware what that might cost him personally. It's as brave as you can get—because he absolutely doesn't need to." Though Munich (2005) does not reach the sustained level of B " artistic achievement achieved by Schindler's List, it approaches the themes of terrorism and retribution responsibly and respects the moral complexity of the subject, even while presenting the material in the framework of a political thriller. Spielberg remembered watching with horror (in the company of his father) the televised coverage of the massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. (That event, depicted in Munich with television footage and fragmentary recreations, is covered fully in Arthur Cohn and Kevin Macdonald's 1999 Oscar-winning documentary OneDay in September.) At the time of the massacre, Spielberg had never heard of terrorism , but felt "rage and frustration" over "Jews being murdered on German soil again." Over time, his growing interest in world politics and involvement in Jewish causes would make him a passionate supporter of Israel. His involvement in Schindler's List and the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation from the 1990s onward brought him in frequent demand for public commentary on Middle Eastern political issues. His liberalism made him skeptical of the more hardline approaches of the Israeli right to the issue of Palestinian independence. It is a bitter irony that making Munich would cause Spielberg to be denounced by some writers as an enemy of Israel, when the film was actually made out of his deeply felt involvement with Israel. "If it became necessary," he told the German magazine Der Spiegel, "I would be prepared to die for the USA and for Israel." The Munich project enabled him to explore his conflicts and concerns about Israel's troubled role in the Middle East and over the issue of how a nation should respond to terrorist attacks. Israel's targeted assassinations of those responsible for the Munich massacre , and others it linked (sometimes tenuously) to terrorism, began as a secretive program, authorizing one or more hit squads to roam Europe for years, hunting down targets. Eventually the program became public knowledge, although its details remain shadowy and controversial. It is no coincidence that Munich was made at a time when the United States was grappling with similar issues: Is a nation justified in breaking international law when it believes its survival is at risk? Are targeted assassinations morally wrong? What does vengeance do to a nation and to a person's soul? And where does the ultimate responsibility lie for political violence? In the screenplay for Munich by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) defines the essential moral dilemma when she asserts, "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values." Munich's subtext is the American response to 9/11. The film implicitly questions the Bush administration's response as both excessive and damaging to the country's moral...

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