Munich

K. and I went to see Munich at BAM last night. The house was packed, and we were forced to sit off center left. When I go to the movies, do I enjoy being forced into a seat that mirrors my politics? I do not. Enchanted at a very young age by Ptolemy, whose flawed cosmology placed the earth, and therefore man, at the center of the universe, seduced by the perfect symmetry of Palladio, whose buildings are best appreciated from their central axis, I've got to see a movie from the middle of the middle of theatre. Like Woody Allen in Annie Hall, I've got to see the movie from beginning to end, including credits. Finally, like God, I require silence. The cinema is after all a cathedral projecting our dreams and nightmares. Last night the parishioners' observance was far from golden. The guy behind me verbally close-captioned the movie for his historically challenged companion: "That's Golda Meir." Asshole.

I explained to K. some of the right wing bloggorrhea preceding the movie's release. As we were leaving K., who is Jewish, said, "I don't get it. The movie made everyone look bad." Exactly. People hate that. You want to remain a member in good standing of Team America, you've got to hate all the right people. Politics becomes more like high school with each passing day.

Here is what some people hate: making a Mossad agent look like a cold-blooded killer, even when he's killing in cold blood; making a Palestinian terrorist look (almost) human, even though he is. To the Manichean, good and evil are always pure. When the bad guys make war, it is bloody, cruel and intolerable. When we make war, it's a bake sale. Our warriors - on the right side of God and History - bake cookies and cupcakes. If they have to blow off a few heads now and again, well that's just the icing on the cake.

A quote I will never forget came in response to scattered criticism in the world press of the brutality of the US-led assault on Fallujah. A young Marine (who reminded me a lot of my brother after he returned from the first Gulf War) spoke with canny cynicism and a hint of regret about the things they were called on to do (like Bartelby, they would prefer not to, but that is up to the politicians, whom they universally despise):

What do they think we do? Marines don't shoot rainbows out of our asses. We fucking kill people.

He went on to say that if people had so many qualms, maybe next time they shouldn't rush [into war] so much.

But what I appreciated most was Munich's unflinching portrayal of the cost of violence on the men who perpetrate it, regardless of what side they are on, regardless of how justified the cause. One thing utterly lost on most politicians and pundits, entirely on the media and those members of the public without a relative serving on the front lines, is any sense that American men and women who return from Iraq alive and physically intact are still casualties of war. The psychic cost of killing another human being is one we prefer not to tally.

What is more human than seeing yourself in the the man facing you? It takes a lot of training to get a soldier to set aside his humanity and see another person - even his enemy - as worthy of death. This training, perfected by the military and by intellgence agencies, does irreparable harm, and the men and women who do the killing are well aware of it. One of the saddest scenes in Munich is when Avner finally returns home to Israel and asks his mother if she wants to hear what he did for his country. She says no, and we understand it is as much to spare herself as him. How many times will this scene be played out in the wake of Iraq? Soldiers will return home to loved ones eager to "spare" them any recounting of the horrors they have seen, and those warriors will understand that they are to shut up. We who have been spared do not wish to be infected by the inhumanity of those who have not.

One last thing: all the wingnuttery, the pre-release attempt at a takedown of the movie, has been carried out by people who haven't seen it. (It opened only yesterday.) How are they any different from the mullahs who condemned The Satanic Verses without having read the book? How do you condemn a work of art in advance? Are they that afraid of what the movie might say, what it might make people feel? The critics pay this work greater respect than it perhaps deserves. As Artaud said, The theatre never saved a man from starving so let's not get our panties in a wad (I'm paraphrasing). Still, Munich's critics are right about this: a work of art in its complexity (and yes, ambiguity) offers a picture of the world that mere ideology is powerless to control. It might make us think anything, that revenge is futile, that the cycle of violence must be broken, even though our enemies started it (and they did...didn't they?). So the attempt is made to kill it in its crib. For past successes of this type, see: Moses.

One of my favorite proverbs, from the Middle East as it happens, states: Whoever tells the truth is chased out of nine villages. You'd think Munich's critics would be too busy chasing al-Qaeda out of ninety-nine villages to go after Steven Spielberg, but then again, look what they did when they had Osama trapped in the mountains at Tora Bora. They went after Saddam. At last, their strategy begins to make sense.