I was in the news business for over 10 years. One of the longest days was 9/11. I had been working two months at the Americus Times-Recorder and at the time was the only regular reporter on staff as two others had quit the month before going to other papers.
While Americus, Ga. was hundreds of miles away from New York City, Arlington, Va. where the Pentagon is located or even Pennsylvania, it was very close to Plains, Ga. where former President Jimmy Carter was living as he had since he left office in 1981. The full extent of what was happening wasn’t known as reports were coming in of the attack on The Pentagon and the plane crash of United 93. Two planes hitting the World Trade Center towers was bad enough.
Technology was still primitive in the news business and I didn’t even have access to the Internet on my computer. One of the women who worked at the front desk area had gone to her apartment nearby to get her TV so we could watch the news with the help of rabbit ears. Yet, there was static as it wasn’t a clear reception. We were really flying blind. But by the mid-afternoon, it was evident that what had happened was going to be all.
September 5 is a historical drama focusing on ABC Sports coverage of the militant group Black September, who were pro-Palestine, taking hostages in the Israeli Olympics athletes housing unit. If you’ve seen Steven Spielberg’s Munich, the T V movie Sword of Gideon or just have a general knowledge of the day’s events, you know the outcome is very grim. In 1972, World War II hadn’t been over for 30 years and the horrors of the war and the Holocaust were still fresh on everyone’s mind.
Germany was then divided in West Germany, the more democratic progressive county, and East Germany, which had fallen under the Communist rule as it had been occupied by the Soviet Union following the end of WWII. The Olympics have always been seen as a time of peace as different nations come together to compete.
Sadly, there were obviously a lot of mistakes made. The beginning of Munich has the militants being mistaken for Olympics athletes and helped over the fencing by other athletes who had snuck out for a night on the town. Security also became an issue as the powers that be didn’t think it would be an issue to have of the housing units with armed security guards. It’s mentioned in this movie that the Munich police was unprepared for such a possibility.
Much of the movie is set within the building where the ABC Sports was temporarily located at the time not too far from the housing building. The day starts off like normal with everyone getting ready and dealing with the daily obstacles. Even though there are Americans like Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), the president of ABC Sports, and others like Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), head of operations, Germans are also helping out. One of them, Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), is a translator who is very helpful but also treated wrongly by the misogyny of the crew.
Even Bader is hostile to her at first because he is Jewish, before he realizes she was too young to even remember much of the war. Setting the Olympics in Munich was an attempt to show how the world had moved on, especially after the 1936 Olympics in Berlin had become a black eye for the way the signs were there but many countries chose to ignore them. It was also the year swimmer Mark Spitz, who is Jewish as well, would become the most successful athlete winning seven gold medals. So there was a big emphasis by all TV stations to showcase him.
Crew members think they hear gunshots just as the daylight is breaking. But they are so far and distant, it’s not much of a concern until some phone calls are made and it gets worse from there. Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) is the head of the control room at ABC. And there’s a sense that some other crew members feel he’s too young for the task. Mason was in his early 30s on Sept. 5, 1972 and it’s possible his youth added more risk to what other more seasoned journalists might have held back on.
As they are broadcasting the events by having Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker) on the scene and even hiding out in an apartment room with a young man who has been promoted to camera-man because they immediately needed one, the question arises if what they are doing is ethical. Police want them to cut the feed because the terrorists are watching it on TV. But Arledge immediately tells them to “get the fuck out” and it’s rationalized by saying the police should’ve cut the electricity to the building.
The event would be televised worldwide with over 900 million people reportedly watching. I remember 20 years ago when my ex and I saw Munich, she said that she remembered the white hat worn by the terrorist Lutiff Afif, who was the leader. Alredge contends with other news stations such as CBS over scheduling. It’s hard to imagine but each station got a time block to air the games that they worked out. Bader is wondering if they’re showing too much as what will happen if someone is killed on live TV.
Family and friends of the athletes taken hostage are obviously watching and they are worried. This leads to an argument between Mason and Bader over reporting that all the hostages are safe without getting official confirmation from a secondary source. Sadly, none of the 11 hostages survived which makes it harder on the TV crew as it shows they’re still human and have empathy even though they have a job to do.
Even after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, they still put out an edition. Many journalists reporting in dangerous places face violence every day. Surviving is the best revenge. And terrorists want to disrupt things. The games had stopped for the rest of the day but officials resumed them because they had to. And the TV crew has to go home for the day and start fresh the next day. It’s a hard way of life but in a world where school shootings are a normalcy, students are expected to grieve for a day or two and then go back and study geometry and A Separate Peace.
September 5 is directed by Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum who co-wrote the script with Moritz Binder and Alex David. Thankfully, Fehlbaum didn’t load this movie down with a bunch of big names. Sarsgaard is a fine actor known for appearing in movies like this. Chaplin is an actor who should’ve had a better career since his appearance in The Thin Red Line but I’m sure a lot of his better scenes were cut because of Terrence Malick’s ego and love of Jim Caviezel I’ve known these two actors for years, but I was surprised by the acting of Magaro and Benesch whose lesser known status adds to the movie’s feel.
Magaro shows Mason as a newsman who stood his ground even when his superiors could’ve removed him. And Benesch has the difficult role of being the outsider both in a male-dominated profession and probably still viewed as a bad person just because of where she was born and raised. She one of the first to hear the gunshots but the others don’t jump on it as quickly and later she is told the men some coffee for which she does reluctantly because that was the mindset of the time.
Also, you can sense she’s sadden that another Israelis who are probably Jewish were murdered over political and religious ideology on German soil again. It wasn’t Nazis this time. Benesch gives a very subdued wonderful performance. Her character is actually fictionalized, probably a composite character of other Germans who worked with the Americans. But she’s a representative of all Germans who probably watched this unfold horrified that it’s happening again.
And now more than 50 years later, Israel and Palestine is at war with no end in sight it seems as both forces are being run by terrorist organizations. Fehlbaum and his production spent months researching the events of that day but the movie seems more contemporary now. They probably didn’t know this was going to happen when they began working on it.
It should just be a grim reminder that not much has changed it seemed.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 