Spielberg & Kushner's Munich '72 / Israeli vengeance film

That's probably true. Still: if it's a mess, then that's just incentive for someone else to tackle the subject a few years down the line and make a better one. This is neither the first nor the last film that will be made about Munich.

There's nothing wrong with it per se, particularly when its in the service to a larger vision - but here the controversy IS the vision. I don't see any reason for this film to exist apart from its value to Spielberg as an attention-getter. Where is the story in this film, why does it need to be told? where is the conflict, where are the characters?

"who would be a better director for this project and why?"

well I offered a different tack upthread (which I would personally be more interested in seeing but hey, I like allegories). To make this subject interesting and able to stand on its own apart from its historical sources, the story would have to be re-contextualized beyond its already well-established global political framework of Israeli violence vs. Palestinian suffering. I can't think of a better director off-hand - someone deft enough to keep the politics in the background and a compelling story/plot/characters up front... I'm sure there's someone but I'm drawing blanks...

One might presume, from Kushner's hiring -- to remove the pure-white hat the Israeli government wears in the eyes of a large chunk of the US population?

To say certain events don't have a film story in them is awfully sweeping. The approach is everything.

Where is the story in this film, why does it need to be told? where is the conflict, where are the characters?

I don't understand this question at all, but Dr. Morbius' answer is a good start.

I can't get with that as a good reason to make a movie. Not because I'm sympathetic to Israel (I definitely am NOT), but because such a narrow scope is inherently limiting and boring. There have to be bigger themes involved beyond the immediate politics.

"To say certain events don't have a film story in them is awfully sweeping. The approach is everything."

okay, fair enough - a good story can be made out of any subject, true. But given Spielberg's hamfisted approach, I bet he won't even TRY to fashion a decent story. Instead he will go for the obvious, politically literal jugular - he has no impetus to do otherwise. To forego the politics in favor of a more interesting plot is antithetical to his whole schtick.

xpost

(the Jodorowsky stuff at Lost Weekend is all VHS and/or PAL transfers, for some reason they don't have the DVDs. Le Video might, I don't know)

(Holy Mountain looks amazing, El Topo a little less so. It's tricky for me to make DVD copies, but I might be able to do it this weekend...?)

Politically and cinematically, both of em are infinitely subtler than the inexplicably unmentioned-as-yet Oliver Stone.

I think he has become a bit more nuanced in recent years than you make him out to be. See: AI, Minority Report, War of the Worlds. Not the height of subtlety, no, but I think lately he's more willing to raise compelling human issues than you give him credit for. And I am willing to give him a little slack since he's so huge (I'll try to clarify if that makes no sense).

xpost thanks for the info/link!

The answer for the question should be obvious (it's a remarkable spy story), but the second question is more difficult. How did they handle it in that movie about the rescue at Entebbe? It's been so long since I've seen that film, I can longer comment on its quality.

I think there's something to be said for that.

OTM completely. you gotta watch spielberg movies as, you know, movies. you will see some amazing shit in a spielberg movie. (so many great shots in Minority Report, for instance)

in this particular instance I'm having a hard time figuring out what those themes would even be (revenge is bad? violence hurts people?) - I haven't seen Amistad but I thought Saving Private Ryan (what I saw of it anyway, I got bored two-thirds of the way in) and Schindler's List were totally hamstrung by the weight of their source material. Spielberg stuck awful hard to the "this really happened and that's why you should care" tack, and I find that pedestrian and tiresome in the extreme. I can't tell you what the "bigger theme" of Schindler's List is. I hated that movie because it removed all moral ambiguity very early on - it trampled all over any real, potentially interesting subtexts - and the plot reads like a laundry list of "nice things Mr. Schindler did for those poor Jews".

yeah, I agree with this wholeheartedly. and the reason I'm bored by Spielberg movies is that extraordinary cinematography, editing, sound design ARE NOT ENOUGH. First and foremost, I have to care about what's going on on-screen, about the characters, about the themes of the story. If that isn't there, the rest is all just lipstick on a pig.

xpost

Yeah, I LOVE John Waters too.

I don't think ANYBODY wants this.

Oddly, I think the infamous "I could've saved one more person" scene is the major counter to this, and the biggest error in the film.

Ed Harris and William Hurt were definitely the best parts of the movie; I think part of the reason the film ultimately left me cold was that I just didn't like Viggo and wifey at all. AHOV does a fantastic job atmosphere building, Harris esp. is totally creepy and tense-creating.

The relationship (esp the sexual) b/w Viggo and Maria Bello was the most compelling part of the movie.

No, I don't want to see a 90-minute "earth not flat" film either.

It is thoroughly possible that my dislike for Viggo (and Eric Bana, for that matter, they kind of are similar in my mind) colors perceptions here!

otm on score.

Munich shows that the international death industry, presumably motivated by nationalism and securing the primal hearth, is actually just a big unstoppable economy (feeding families like "Papa" Michel Lonsdale's).

I liked that angle and the interactions with the family but I was half expecting Papa to come down with a heart attack during the idyllic countryside dinner sequence. Some of the shots were soooo similar, I am half curious if it was purposeful because of the inevitable comparison that would be made there regardless.

What a film -- my first viewing since 2006.

Spielberg had a pretty interesting run in the oughts: AI/Minority Report/Catch Me If You Can/War of the Worlds/Munich. (Didn’t see The Terminal)