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"Violence isn't the answer, Spielberg tells us in 'Munich.' But the artists and filmmakers who are fondest of that handy platitude are never able to tell us what the answer is . . ."
Well, gee, if film directors have the answer to terrorism, we can all just go home. Or maybe "Munich" should have starred Vin Diesel and Sylvester Stallone, blowing away all the bad guys and feeling good about it. Would that have made you happy?
"Munich" doesn't answer any questions; it raises them. That's why I didn't just like, but loved, this movie; it is art. I can see almost every point raised by the reviewer the other way around, particularly the objection to the scene in which Avner makes love to his wife while getting flashbacks to the violence on the tarmac at Munich. This did not trivialize the violence at all. It showed eloquently the two sides of passion, what we would do to protect the people we love, and Avner's doubts about retreating from violence. It shows us precisely that there is no answer, but that we have to go into that painful place to at least look for one.
The fact that Avner did, in the end, renounce violence, didn't sit well with me as an answer, and I don't believe that Spielberg intended it to be an answer at all. His words did not move Efraim. They didn't change history. That was what was meant by the World Trade Center in the background, in case the reviewer is still wondering. (By the way, I believe that visual was flawed; part of the WTC would have still been under construction then--or perhaps construction continued only on the interior.)
If you want "shades of gray," look more closely, because Spielberg delivers them. He delivered them very courageously in "Schindler's List," and he continues the tradition in "Munich." Speilberg never tells us that morality is relative, that right and wrong are not important. He shows us that morality is hard.
Lastly, to comment on the questionable historical basis: This movie is fiction. It is "based on true events" but essentially fictional. Fiction is not true, but in such a work of art as "Munich," fiction is truth.
