Film Review - September 5
Tim Fehlbaum retells the notorious 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist tragedy from the perspective of ABC television
The devastating events of the 1972 Munich Olympics, in which Palestinian terrorist group Black September took the Israeli Olympic team hostage, have been memorably covered on film before. Most essentially, Kevin MacDonald’s superb Oscar-winning documentary One Day in September (1999) contains vital first-hand testimony, including a controversial interview with the one remaining Black September survivor, Jamal Al-Gashey, from a secret location somewhere in Africa. Secondly, Steven Spielberg’s gripping thriller Munich (2005) dramatises Mossad’s covert revenge mission that took place in response. Taken together, these form an extraordinary and vital double bill, as I’ve written about elsewhere.
In the case of director Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5, we get another important perspective on this notorious tragedy, this time from the perspective of the ABC sport journalists who covered the story live. The principal characters are Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), ABC Sports president, who insists the network use their on-site anchors Jim McKay and Peter Jennings to cover the story instead of cutting back and forth from a US-based studio. McKay isn’t depicted by an actor, but his famous archive footage is used, as is much of the real siege footage. Jennings appears both through real broadcast footage and via an actor, Benjamin Walker.
The narrative also concerns inexperienced director Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), who finds himself in the hot seat covering the hostage crisis, along with Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), the head of operations who vouched for him to direct. German translator Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch) is another pivotal (albeit fictionalised) character since her linguistic skills give ABC the edge when listening to German police radios. The ABC crew also sent a cameraman posing as a US athlete into the cordoned-off Olympic village; a daring feat that gleaned valuable 16mm footage in addition to the live video.
Performances are excellent, especially from Sarsgaard, Magaro, Chaplin, and Benesch. It’s particularly great to see the latter again after her stunning performance in The Teacher’s Lounge (2023). Working from a tight, taut screenplay with co-writers Moritz Binder and Alex David, Tim Fehlbaum helms the piece with claustrophobic energy. He restricts the drama to almost entirely within the television gallery, studio, and edit rooms, with an eye and ear for the analogue technologies of the time. The little details depicting the chemical development of photographs and 16mm footage, physical caption superimposition, old-fashioned film editing, and so forth add to the tremendous sense of time and place, as does Markus Förderer atmospheric cinematography and Lorenz Dangel’s tense, foreboding score.
No matter how familiar one might be with the real events, seeing them unfold again from the perspective of media professionals is nothing less than riveting. From the bone-chilling manner in which the games were allowed to continue for a time even after the hostage situation began to unfold, to the ineptitude of the West German police, this remains a horribly distressing story. However, questions not previously considered in other screen accounts are raised by the drama, including ethical dilemmas such as whether to show someone being killed on live television. Or whether ABC inadvertently contributed to the problem during a live broadcast of an aborted police counterattack that could be seen on the televisions inside the Olympic Village. The issue of journalistic responsibility is timeless, giving this film an immediate relevancy beyond its historical context.
All things considered, September 5 comes highly recommended, especially if you know nothing about this dark chapter of Olympic history. If you do, this reframes the tragedy in a way not seen before. Do go and see it. Then watch One Day in September and Munich for a fuller perspective.
(Originally published at Medium.)
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