September 5
If Tim Fehlbaum’s “September 5” had spent more time probing the reasons why the Palestinian terrorist group Black September took 11 Israeli athletes hostage in the Olympic village during 1972’s Munich Summer Games, it would have shifted the trajectory of what the movie was about, and muddied its purpose. Fehlbaum’s film isn’t about digging into the decades of violence since Israel’s founding, and Palestinian displacement, that led to the hostages being taken, but about how ABC Sports’s TV crew in Munich transitioned from its Olympic coverage to telling the story in front of them. It takes a different mindset to cover Olympic games than to cover a hostage situation, and one of the film’s strengths is how it asks us to question the ways in which the crew tried to make sure that they had the story first, and the consequences of those choices.
Our modern media landscape was born out of moments like this one. “If it bleeds, it leads.” Making sure we have a front row seat for potential violence, regardless of whether it’s an ethically-defensible decision or not. Disregard for victim’s families. Trying to be the first with “news,” even if it isn’t fully confirmed yet. This is all common place now, and I’m sure we can point to specific moments where our blood boiled as we watched it unfold. Certainly, there’s a lot to be said about the ways in which the ABC crew tried to improvise their coverage, and be as accurate as possible, but there were reckless choices- like following a potential sniper team on an adjacent roof with a live feed which would have been available in all the village rooms- where morality is set aside for the sake of exclusive footage that possibly could have led to the tragedy that followed. In the moment, it seemed like the best thing to do; they probably should have thought about whether it’s the right thing to do.
The film begins with the ABC Sports team going about its regular routine, switching off as needed; the head of the team, Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), tells them not to bother him, as he’s about to get some much-needed rest. And then, what sounds like gunshots are heard by some of the crew. Then, the tips come in of a hostage situation in the Olympic village. As the situation escalates, so do the choices Arledge and Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), who’s is in charge of the control room, must make in order to stay focused on what the story is. Will some of the interviews they’ve done with some of the athletes help with the coverage? As the village is locked down, how can they get a feed to see what’s going on. Having Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), a translator fluent in both German and Hebrew, helps get the story straight, but with so little being pieced out at a time, maybe the news crew would be best suited for this. Roone is insistent, however, of keeping it with Sports.
Fehlbaum’s real-life thriller is a tense 94 minutes as we watch the team adapt and form a way of telling the story as cleanly, and as engagingly, as possible. The cinematography by Markus Förderer is always moving, and captures the frantic anxiety of the moment, while Hansjörg Weißbrich’s editing makes strong choices in how we are move from one moment to the next, which perspective is important at the time to follow. Just underneath is composer Lorenz Dangel’s score, which is understated but adds just enough propulsion to keep driving the drama of the story. In its third act, when the fate of the hostages is at its most uncertain, is when Fehlbaum seems to dig into the ethical dilemma of this team’s choices the most, and when the truth comes out, it is heartbreaking. And yet, the show must go on. The question is, will everyone be able to go on with it? That’s one of the fundamental questions of the “September 5,” and the answers will not surprise anyone who’s seen what the media thirst for spectacle has led to.
