David Lehrer and Michael Berenbaum published an article in Friday’s Los Angeles Jewish Journal criticizing the critics of “Munich” for — among other things — allegedly missing the point:
Any thinking American understands that responding to terror, even if violent and brutal, is qualitatively different than indiscriminately and purposefully targeting innocents. If you don’t get that message from “Munich,” you aren’t watching the film.
As a thinking American who watched the film, I didn’t get that message from it (nor would a three-hour film be necessary to convey it). Tony Kushner had a very different message in mind, as his article in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times (“Defending ‘Munich’ to My Mishpocheh”) demonstrates.
In writing about the film, Kushner does not mention the difference between responding to terror and purposefully targeting innocents. He writes that the film reflects the possibility that “injustice can drive people to do horrible things,” and that when “horrific crimes are committed, [one should] insist on asking, “Why did that happen?” People “do terrible things in the name of a cause they believe is just, even in the name of a cause that actually is just.”
In other words, we [the filmmakers] believe that one aspect of the struggle against terrorism is the struggle to comprehend terrorism.
“Munich” is a film that, in its screenwriter’s words, attempts to “comprehend” terrorism — “insisting” we respond to it by seeking to understand why terrorists do “terrible things.” The film seeks to illustrate that all people do “horrible things” (even those whose cause is just), so we need to "understand" the enemy who does it.
At the end of the film, the main character, no longer confident of the morality of Israel’s response to terrorism, literally walks away. The message of the film is pretty clear, and it is not about the qualitative difference between terror and a response to terror.
(Prior posts in this series: “Munich: Get Me Rewrite!” “More on Munich” “Still More on Munich”).