Munich
The name “Munich” has little bearing on the story of the movie, which despicts a band of people held captive by the political ideology of others. “Munich” is about bondage – about the constellations of circumstance that cause people who normally would see each other as human, as individuals, to use each other as means to ends, to treat each other as enemies. It is also commentary on the karmic reality of violence undertaken by governments, executed by people: killing begets killing. Hatred remembered in ones bones does not simply cease to be; it propagates to everyone we touch. Everything we see in the movie is presumably the aftermath of the tragedy at the Olympic Games; yet as the movie progresses it becomes clear that the personal motivations for each killing had their geneses long before the events at Munich gave excuse for their expression. The title “Munich” evokes for me an ironic sense that the reprisals actually had little to do with the events in 1972, and everything to do with karma of the Isreali and Palestinian worlds, a karma continuously enforced by policy and grudges unforgotten.
In the playground, Avner pleads for General Zamir to break bread with him, to sit down and enjoy a meal together, to taste his food. He is much more believable as a cook (“butcher’s hands, gentle souls”) than Szpilman is as a musician in “The Pianist”. Zamir refuses. He sees no point in considering Avner as more than a pawn in the game; just as the assassins distance themselves from their subjects for the sake of completing the mission, so he distances himself from his underlings. Committing terrible acts against one’s fellow man pays a toll on the psyche, unless.
Unless they aren’t against one’s fellow man, but against a thing, say … this rock. The mission is exhausting for Avner (and Robert), and not for Steve, because Avner cannot shake the feeling of responsibility he has for what he has done. Despite his anonymity, despite the blessings of his government, and despite the anger and bitterness in his own heart, he cannot fully justify his actions to himself. As leader of the group of assassins, he is forced to conceal his doubts and conflict from the others. With no outlet – even Avner’s mother is not interested in his ordeals, convinced as she is that they have been for a righteous cause – they torture him in his dreams, they whisper to him like the echoes of bombshells in the tangle of Vietnam. He finds no hint of compassion or humanity in his employers. No listening ear. They want his intelligence, his sources, what he has learned, not what he has felt.
He tells them nothing. When recruited for the task, Avner was offered nothing save financial reward and the suggestion that he would be serving his country. Even with such subtle intimations given regarding the latter, Avner immediately felt a sense of responsibility toward the job, without knowing anything about its nature. In this instant, without even realizing it, he forfeited his status as a free agent and psychologically established his servitude to another entity. But what was his allegiance based upon? Something at the core of his being? Or operant conditioning? I say the latter, and furthermore that his journeys serve to make him question and ultimately unlearn the beliefs which were the basis of his response to the initial proposition. Less disillusioned about, more awakened to the stark reality of the modus operandi of his employer, he refuses to continue to accept the responsibility that befalls him on account of acting on its behalf. He answers to himself, alone.
In the end, Avner seeks what his mother sought, what his short-lived Palestinian interlocutor sought: “home”. But he does not find it in a physical plot of land among his own. He salvages it from his love, Daphna, that woman who humanizes him, his unconditional family. For this home, he never had to kill.