In a year when the Oscars’ Best Documentary award went to “No Other Land” — an equivocating Palestinian drama of local activists fighting the Israeli military’s alleged displacements and discrimination — it is fascinating to see a pro-Israeli film break through mainstream Hollywood.
Despite Americans’ overwhelming bipartisan support for Israel’s right to defend itself, Hollywood is torn on the issue.
The Far-Left and the far-Right either support the Palestinian cause or dissident Christians struggling in the Holy Land. Moderates generally affirm that Israel has not been the aggressor and has held back on intentionally killing civilians.
That’s despite repeated cries of genocide.
Releasing a film like “September 5” amid this conflict is fascinating given that division. The film only received a wide release in December and is currently trickling out on VOD and physical media. It’s also currently streaming on Paramount+.
The film follows the infamous terrorist attack that occurred at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics. The Palestinian group Black September kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes and got into a gunfight with German police at the Munich airport that killed an officer, the athletes and the militants.
The event overshadowed the games and became one of the most televised terrorist attacks in human history. Roughly 900 million watched the live broadcast from the Olympic Village.
“September 5” is told from the ABC News sportscasters who collaborated with Peter Jennings to use their unique access to get the news out to the world.
This lens is the beating heart of the film’s pathos and perspective. The sportscasters were out of their league and participating in an unfamiliar form of journalism. They make several key mistakes throughout the film, up to and including accidentally keying in the terrorists to the response of the Munich police.
It’s clear that Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), and Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), in their capacity as sports journalists, aren’t in the best position to be making objective calls about what is happening.
They’re able to put a live studio camera on the ground and point to the hostage situation, drawing concerns that they might accidentally broadcast a murder on live television. They’re also fighting their limitations.
They don’t speak German, forcing them to rely on a translator. They regularly find themselves getting lied to by the police. The latter are internally cracking under the pressure and unable to adequately respond.
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By the film’s end, there’s a bleak sense that the journalists didn’t make a difference. Despite being praised by their higher-ups and making some correct, risky calls, the humanity of the situation is ultimately too much to bear.
They’re going to win Pulitzer Prizes and go down in history for their reporting, while the bodies of 17 people and government helicopters are smoldering at the airport.
The politics of such a terrorist attack also gum up the situation. Given that the Munich Olympics were happening in Germany just 27 years after the Holocaust, there is a palpable pressure for the German government to show it has reformed.
Officials want to protect the Israeli athletes at all costs, but its police and military are inexperienced and neutered, hiding important details from the public. When the pressure gets too hot, their first response is to shut down the broadcasts.
“September 5” certainly isn’t a deep cut against the Fourth Estate. If anything, it’s meant to lionize it. Given its unique perspective, though, and the insane history in play, it captures many of the fascinating tensions that exist within journalism.
ABC’s voyeuristic viewpoint, inexperienced journalists and reliance on press releases from the state mean that it is doomed to misreport important details that can get people killed. They want to make a difference, but their success can only be bittersweet.
Their best efforts make them, at best, documenters of man’s inhumanity.
Not surprisingly, the film’s approach to the underlying issue of Israel vs. Palestine is mostly to sideline it. There isn’t much reflecting on the morality of the conflict.
The focus stays on the human cost of its consequences.
This isn’t Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” which approached the same events with a far more polemic viewpoint. The Israeli activists are portrayed rightly as innocent victims in “September 5,” while athletes from other Arab countries fully condemn the terrorist attack as evil.
Regardless, it is still brave in this moment to posit that the modern state of Israel can be in such a position. It’s one thing for recent films like “Bardejov” and “The Zone Of Interest” to condemn the genocide of the Jewish people during the Holocaust, especially while their filmmakers concurrently condemn Israel on the national stage.
It’s another for recent films like 2023’s “Golda” or “September 5” to draw the lines of good and evil so directly.
