Review: September 5 makes a clear choice for neutrality in depicting the 1972 Olympic hostage crisis | Canada Voices

September 5

Directed by Tim Fehlbaum

Written by Moritz Binder, Alex David and Tim Fehlbaum

Starring John Magaro, Peter Sarsgaard, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch

Classification PG; 95 minutes

Opens in Toronto Dec. 13, nationwide Jan. 17.

There’s no way to watch September 5 and not relate it to current events. Tim Fehlbaum’s slight but engaging newsroom thriller burrows into the control room alongside the ABC team stationed in Munich during the 1972 Olympics as a hostage crisis unfolds. That intense situation, which ABC’s live coverage made a sensationalized television spectacle, ended with all 11 Israeli hostages and five Palestinian gunmen dead.

This is the same tragedy that Steven Spielberg explored so empathetically in his mid-career masterpiece Munich, a movie about how the continuing violence between Israelis and Palestinians weighs on the soul. While the Munich Olympics is an instigating catastrophe in Spielberg’s film, a window into a bigger story about root causes and future consequences, Fehlbaum takes a much narrower and relatively soulless approach.

His film locks into the control room personnel as they report on what they’re seeing from their limited angles, without making any explicit comment on the underlying conflict. You could argue that the film is adopting journalistic neutrality like its subjects, if such a thing is to be believed. But all art is political and September 5 makes choices.

The film mulls the fraught relationship between Germans and Israelis, and the role that plays in the background of the hostage crisis. It rightfully dwells on the heavy emotions around the innocent hostages. But it also erases any context or humanity in relation to the Palestinian gunmen. Perhaps that’s to its credit, since emulating the way mainstream news tends to cover the Israel-Palestine conflict then and now is the point.

For television news junkies, September 5 is more fascinating as an ornamental look at the medium, capturing the pivotal moment a hostage situation unfolded live on air, and the world engaged with the term terrorism. Fehlbaum, with co-writers Moritz Binder and Alex David, fixates on newsroom processes – from cutting tape to negotiating satellite feeds – and the on-the-fly decisions made by producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) and surrounding executives Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) and Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin).

The team springs into action in the early morning hours with only the whisper of an unfolding story, along with gunshots heard from the distant Olympic village. There’s a genuine thrill to how they scrap together elements – bits of confirmed information from German police, an interview in the can with a potential hostage, footage hustled through security checks – to put together a compelling news package. September 5 splices together its thoroughly researched dramatic recreations with the actual programming ABC aired, an initially nifty back and forth that quickly wears thin.

More compelling are those moments when Mason, Arledge and Bader stop, if briefly, to consider the potential ramifications of their choices. What if the hostages’ families see their loved ones executed on a live feed? What if the hostage-takers, from the group Black September, are warned of police action because they’re watching ABC’s coverage? Such passing considerations give us a fleeting window into these characters. But despite the talented cast, it’s not enough to build any real emotional attachment.

There is a big question these characters don’t consider in the moment: What does it mean to give Black September a global platform? As in, who else would benefit from that kind of press? Fehlbaum and his co-writers leave that conversation to the audience. They’re more fixated on what this tragedy meant for Germany, a country hoping for a facelift as it hosted its first Olympics since the 1936 games overseen by Hitler.

The national guilt over Germany’s Nazi past felt during these games is often clunkily expressed through a translator in the newsroom (played by Leonie Benesch, the wonderful star of The Teacher’s Lounge) and seized on by the producers.

At least that guilt is given a voice. Not everyone affected by this story gets that.