A dubious Munich

Fresh off my long-winded babble about the confusing relationship between politics and aesthetics, I’ll point to a couple of interesting articles on Spielberg’s new film, Munich. When the film was first announced, I was willing to defend it, at least tentatively, because I don’t see anything terribly wrong with recognizing the moral cost of even the most necessary violence.

Terrorists deserve to be hunted down, but if you think that those who have to do the hunting—especially in peaceful, urban areas and face-to-face situations, as the Mossad retributions apparently occurred—won’t be changed in doing it, you’re n some sort of ultra righteous dreamworld that doesn’t recognize that even the most justified violent response has a cost.

Spielberg and Kushner, however, seem to think that not only does violent retribution have a cost, it has the same cost as the original terrorist acts. Killing is killing is killing is probably the best way to summarize the attitude Leon Wieseltier accuses the movie of in The New Republic, and while that might make for some classically symmetrical dramatic writing, it’s not even remotely decent politics or morality.

But if Wieseltier’s piece is accurate, the film is probably exceedingly well made, in that overwhelming, sentimental bombast way of Spielberg’s, and those of us who appreciate his cinematic marvels—I thought War of the Worlds was damn near perfect until the final moments turned out to be all gooey cornball sentiment and none of the harsh terror of the first hour and a half—will probably appreciate being once again “blown away” in classic Spielbergian style, despite Wieseltier’s objections.

So what does one do with a film likely to be dominated by both an asinine moral symmetry and spectacular filmmaking? The temptation for many in the field of political and cultural commentary is to condemn it, but I think it’s possible to condemn a film’s political attributes without condemning the film. It’s a tough thing, to praise showmanship and denigrate the show, but I think it’s important for both conservatives and liberals to find ways to, er, love the art and hate the message.

PS: This NYT article gets a similar negative response from an Israeli diplomat, though the “official” response from the country is summarized as, “It's not so great for Israel, but so what?”