(Check out Chris Reed’s movie review of September 5. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
On September 5, 1972, eight operatives from Black September, a militant group loosely affiliated with the Palestinian organization Fatah, infiltrated the Olympic Village in Munich, host of that year’s Summer Olympics, and broke into the apartments housing the Israeli team. They would kill two athletes there and take nine more hostage. By early the next morning, all the Israelis, and most of the Palestinians, would be dead. It was a horrific disaster, made worse by the miscommunication and incompetence of the German police, whose actions were limited by a post-World War II pacifist constitution.
This tragedy has been covered in movies before, in both Kevin Macdonald’s Oscar-winning 1999 documentary One Day in September and Steven Spielberg’s 2005 action thriller Munich. Now comes September 5, from Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum (The Colony), which tackles the incident from a brand-new angle: the ABC control room that broadcast the events live to the entire world. Though we rarely step outside, we plunge fully into the horror through the eyes and ears of the cameras and microphones and those behind them. The result is a taut meditation on not only the geopolitics of terrorism but the role of the media in shaping how we interpret such episodes.
The movie opens with a period promotional video made by ABC to showcase the immediacy and depth of their coverage of the Games. Using a satellite that they shared with other networks, and a crackerjack squad of newscasters and technicians, the folks on the ground working for ABC took pride in their ability to beam live events from Germany back to the States and beyond, accompanied by insightful commentary. Little did know they would soon make history transmitting the first-ever live broadcast of an act of terrorism.
Fehlbaum sets up the location and cast with a careful precision that soon reaps great dramatic rewards. Each character—many of them the real people involved, including future ABC World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker, The Ice Road)—has a part to play, making this a masterful ensemble piece where no element is too small or insignificant. Standouts include Peter Sarsgaard (Human Capital), as Roone Arledge, President of ABC Sports; Ben Chaplin (The Dig), as Marvin Bader, VP of ABC’s Olympic Operations; John Magaro (Past Lives), as Geoffrey Mason, a sports producer whose first day at the helm of the control room happens to be this one; and Leonie Benesch (The Teachers’ Lounge), as Marianne Gebhardt, a German interpreter working for the Americans. They immerse themselves in the moment, bringing us along for the harrowing ride.
There’s a claustrophobia brought on by the tight spaces and artificial illumination of the network halls which serves the story well. The smoke in the air and sweat on people’s faces make the tension palpable. Even though we see very little of what is going on beyond the studio walls, the mise-en-scène brings it very much home.
The filmmakers also prove quite adept at mixing archival material and recreations. ABC’s Wide World of Sports host Jim McKay is not played by an actor, but instead, along with his interview subjects, appears as he was, seamlessly edited into the rest. For a movie that questions the role that television played in not only broadcasting, but heightening, the unfolding catastrophe—at one point, a police operation is canceled because the authorities realize that the terrorists can see it unfolding in real time on the apartment TV—this duality of the historical record paired with reenactments underlines the central theme. In our present media landscape, rife with disinformation and manipulation, these issues loom even larger.
It’s a smart piece of cinema, fully engaging throughout. The cost of human lives is never diminished, even as the price of entertainment is thrown up for debate. The next time you tune in to watch some live broadcast of the worst kind of calamity, thank the unlikely pioneers of the 1972 ABC sports team for making it all possible.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
Paramount Pictures;Tim Fehlbaum; September 5
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