Of course, many might wonder why, of all the historical subject matters to focus on, yet again, the events of the Munich massacre on September 5-6, 1972 are what director Tim Fehlbaum would choose to home in on with his co-screenwriters Moritz Binder and Alex David. But it doesn’t take long to realize that the approach this team of writers and filmmakers have opted for is one that is previously uncharted with regard to the telling of this story. Which, most notably, has been retold through Steven Spielberg’s lens in 2005’s Munich and, before that, in 1999, via a stark documentary from Kevin Macdonald, One Day in September. In both films’ cases, the Academy came knocking (with multiple nominations for Munich and a win for Best Documentary Feature for One Day in September). Just as it’s come knocking for September 5 with a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. And rightly so, for the narrative is undeniably tense, taut and innovative in its telling.
Like most movies set within a newsroom context (from Network to Spotlight), the atmosphere is already nerve-racking/high-energy enough as it is without adding into the fray a very unexpected hostage situation. Particularly against the backdrop of an Olympics that was meant to prove Germany had fully come out of the other side of World War II as a better, gentler country. A pacifist county. Hence, opting not to have very heavy security patrolling the Olympic Village where eleven Israeli hostages were taken prisoner by the Palestinian group known as Black September. The lax security situation was, obviously, a boon to the organization’s plan. And all because the Germans thought it best not to have black-booted officers trampling around the scene to keep recalling the days of Nazism. As far as “optics” went, they figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to send out images worldwide of anything still resembling fascism (e.g., staunch “soldiers”). Instead, they wanted everything to display an aura of peace, community and togetherness.
To accommodate the projection of that image was the media. Various television networks from around the globe converged on Munich to document what was to be a momentous post-war occasion. Among those networks, of course, was a team of sports newscasters from ABC. Including the president of ABC Sports, Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), the head of the Munich control room, Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), the head of operation, and Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), a “composite” sort of character necessary for the purpose of providing a moral compass/sounding board—an aura further amplified by the fact that she’s the only one who can understand German and Hebrew.
And yet, of course, she’s still the person they ask for coffee because she’s a woman in 1972 (though, of course, that would probably still happen to some women now, depending on the workplace). When she’s not being demeaned in that way, she’s being told, essentially, that she’s a naïve little girl by Bader when she translates someone’s onscreen interview as follows: “He’s saying that the games are an opportunity to welcome the world to a new Germany, to move on from the past.” “Yeah, sure,” Mader replies with venomous sarcasm.” Marianne adds, “I mean it’s what we all hope for. What else can we do but move on, try to be better?” Bader clearly isn’t moved by her argument, but softens toward her nonetheless.
Alas, any feelings of “hope” or “moving on from the past” are quickly kiboshed by the sound of gunshots in the distance. Marianne is the one to go out with a borrowed receiver and headphones to report on what she sees out there. And what she can tell Mason and Bader from the ground is that the Israelis have been taken hostage. Which means, all at once, what was to be garden-variety sports coverage for this ABC news team becomes what is later billed as the first live broadcast of this level of carnage. To the point where Mason has to ask Arledge and Bader, “Can we show someone being shot on live television?” And here September 5 gets to the core its message: where is the line between “following a story” and outright exploiting it for the sake of ratings and “success.”
In the modern age, this moral quandary (if people even still consider it a moral quandary at all) has pivoted overtly to the internet and social media. With many “independent broadcasters” having no filter whatsoever on what they’ll post or deem worthy of “commentary” (a.k.a. delivering their own so-called hot take on something horrific). In that newsroom in 1972, however, there was still at least a dash of hesitation about the ethicality of what they were filming and broadcasting.
In an article for The Hollywood Reporter describing the real-life Mason’s involvement in the project as far as being both an interview subject and consultant for the research that went into September 5, it is noted, “In the thousands of years of human civilization before that moment, almost no one had ever had the opportunity to show a calamity in real time. You arrived on the scene after; you read the accounts of the people who were there. This was different. This was a lens onto right now. And Mason would decide where it would point.” And yet, what September 5 fails to acknowledge in terms of “livestreaming carnage” for the first time in modern history was that the Vietnam War already set a precedent by being brought into Americans’ living rooms via CBS starting in the mid-1960s.
Of course, this wasn’t through the “livestream” approach that Mason was left no choice but to take. The various reels of the Vietnam War, called “television’s war” as a result of being the first armed conflict of its kind to be featured on TV, were captured in real time, yes, but they were not “livestreamed,” filtered instead through a certain kind of “news reporting” slant that still allowed the situation to be seen as less severe because it was punctuated with “expert commentary.” Much different compared to the viewing impact of knowing a masked man with an assault rifle is actually threatening to take another life right at the very instant you’re watching it, and that you know as much about what’s going on as the people filming it.
At another point in the film, when German officers are tasked with trying to covertly infiltrate the Israelis’ apartment as part of a rescue mission, Mason watches them bumblingly scale the roof as he comments, “These cops have no idea what they’re doing.” “No wonder they lost the war,” another man in the control room caustically responds. Not only does it speak to the continued underlying derision for Germany, but also the notion that, with the birth of live coverage for everything, suddenly, everybody was allowed to become a critic. An “expert” that could tell the experts what they did wrong. In this same scene, it also dawns on Mason that if everyone else at the Olympics has a TV to watch this on, then so, too, do the terrorists from inside the Israelis’ apartment.
Which means they can see if and when any type of authority figure tries to enter the premises without warning. Begging the question—asked by Mason—of whether or not it’s ultimately the media’s fault for tipping the terrorists off to what’s been happening outside the apartment. Yet another ethical question that few would bother to think about or ask themselves at this point in time, when it’s all done in service of the “views,” the “metrics,” the “followers.” And fuck all the rest—life or death consequences be damned.
Mason does have a moment of his own like this, opting to give himself the greenlight to report that the hostages are all safe even though he hasn’t received any such legitimate confirmation. Only hearsay from a questionable source. Of course, after choosing to go with his knee-jerk reporting reaction for the sake of being “first,” it’s obvious that this moment was a precursor to—and a harbinger of—social media instantaneousness and its associated spreading of misinformation.
September 5 is also particularly adept at undercuttingly reminding viewers that early forms of media are at the root of present-day desensitization. Case in point, how the footage of the dramatic hostage situation was still interspersed with commercials (from no less than Kodak, even though September 5, 1972 in Munich was hardly a “Kodak moment”) and reports of how other participants in the Olympics were still playing sports/training for the games as though everything was normal/peachy keen. Later, when it all falls to pieces, Marianne has a revelation that not only has Germany failed—not just these people, but also to send a message of peace and harmony—but that no one was concerned with the actual reality of the situation. Only the grotesque documenting of it. So it is that she tells Mason of her trip to the airfield where the remaining hostages were massacred, “I saw nothing. I was there with hundreds of people, we stared into the night because we were waiting for something to happen because we wanted to take a picture.”
This kind of “clamoring-for-more-news-at-any-cost” mentality, no matter how emotionally wrought the result (therefore, leading to an eventual emotional numbing), was begat by an event like this. An event that provided the perfect opportunity to birth this brand-new phenomenon—this germinal form of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. And it was the product of a rare confluence of historical and modern media circumstances. At the end of September 5, a series of title cards read, “September 5, 1972 was the first time an act of terrorism was broadcast live around the world. 900 million people were watching.”
Two years after this hostage-taking shown on live TV, it seemed the nation was due for a new form of desensitization when a Florida news reporter named Christine Chubbuck committed suicide on live TV. So it was that the 1970s truly did kick off a new era in the lengths that TV—and media in general—could go to desensitize the public with enough grisly images shown in a short period of time. Apart from September 5’s fundamental message about the waning ethics of journalism (broadcast and otherwise) as the advancement of technology continued to furnish the idea that everything should be documented, no matter the moral gray area of doing so, it also speaks to the continued guilt of Germany over yet another senseless slaughtering of Jewish people. Though it was not senseless to Palestinians who have, ever since 1948, rightfully felt that they’re being erased from their own land.
To boot, Israel’s very existence is a direct result of Germany’s actions during World War II. That Jews felt so unsafe from the prospect of future discrimination that they promoted the need for the establishment of their own nation of people, well, it has some very profound implications. Not to mention lasting ripple effects that, needless to say, the world is still witnessing today. Through the genocide of yet another people. Granted, the media conveniently does not want to livestream that particular massacre.
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