Un giorno a settembre

In Britain at least, this film has been strongly criticised by hardly disinterested intellectual heavyweights like Edward Said and Tom Paulin. The main argument against the film is that it takes place in an historical vacuum, that it shows members of the 1972 Israeli Olympic team being taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists, but it does not explain the political reasons why this happened. This is largely true - although there is brief mention at the beginning of the horrific camp conditions Palestinians suffered in their own homeland appropriated by Israel, it says nothing about this highly contentious appropriation, about the natural urge to struggle against it.

This is underscored by a blatantly manipulative structure - while the representative of the hostages is (necessarily) solitary, anonymous, in hiding, talking in shadows (the other surviving terrorists were murdered by Israeli assassination squads; this information is recorded in a coda that

seems like some kind of chilling reward for the audience); the dead men are shown as almost saintly - pictured getting married, with babies, smiling, honest, healthy, sporty, part of a community and tradition - one story talks about the high-minded ideals of one coach who fraternised with his political enemies from Lebanon.

Aside from the dubious shamelessness of this manipulation, I don't really have a problem with the film's focus. Coming from a country where political terrorists have, for thirty years, been slaughtering wholesale largely apolitical citizens in the name of justice, who have used bogus political ideology as a front for gangsterism, I am somewhat out of sympathy with anything that proclaims humanitarian motives and leaves innocent people dead. Critics complain that ONE DAY ignores the story of the Palestinians, their feelings of repression and injustice - and it is unlikely a film on this subject will have a voiceover from a powerful Hollywood player, and win an Oscar - but to do this would abstract the event, would turn it into a political chess game, and not a ghastly abomination where real people, far too young, with families, are unaccountably murdered. It is the stuff of paranoid modernist literature - you wake up one morning with all your friends, and by sheer random chance, you're held hostage and killed.

So if we agree that the film is fatally biased, we can see that it has many virtues. ONE DAY has been called a thriller - it was literally so for me because I'd never heard about this atrocity - and the techniques used (the pounding score, the edgy editing, the foregrounding of clocks and deadlines, the withholding of explanatory, hindsight information) all contribute to a sense of almost unbearable tension. I don't know how this is for people (the majority) who know the story.

About half way through, as you begin to realise how things will probably turn out, the film stops being a thriller, and becomes an exercise in dread: time contracts, and you hope the film goes on forever so that the intolerable denouement is postponed. It is unbearable. But after the film you begin to question the ethics of all this. One of the themes of the film is the media treatment of the crisis, the reprehensible desire of the Olympic Committee to get it out of the way as quickly as possible - one victim's wife accuses the media of turning the crisis into a 'show'. But this is precisely what Macdonald does, turning human tragedy into an entertainment by turns kinetic and visceral.

Other plusses are the revelations of shocking, farcical German incompetence, desperate to reveal deNazification by having no security whatsoever; the callous, indifferent face-saving here by representatives of the police is the film's true, sickening, achievement. The brief montages of the sporting events, the whole point of the Olympics, are exhilirating, soundtracked to an uplifting Moog Bach, making you wonder why people can't make better sports movies.

ONE DAY has been compared to Errol Morris's documentaries, and you can see, superficially, why - the Phillip Glass score, the distortion of footage and time, the letting authority hang itself. But Morris, in a film like THE THIN BLUE LINE, is concerned not so much with presenting a truth as destroying the official version, exposing its weaknesses, repressions, lies. His recreated scenes, heightened images, distancing effects, all point to the artificiality of the official 'truth'. Morris uses documenatary's claim to authenticity and truth, to expose the inauthenticity of 'truth'. His is a critical cinema.

MacDonald, however, IS offering official truth here - there is no real difference between what he says and the ABC news reporter. This is not a critical film, pandering to firmly entrenched ideologies. Further, the documentary as a genre is limited. It can tell us about facts, analyses. It can reveal witness. There is an astonishing frisson in being able to see these terrorists walking and talking on the big screen, that projection of fantasies, like people, not mythical constructs. But documentary can never get at people's inner lives, and as this is what real life really is, documentaries seem thin and superficial, a betrayal of life. And so, finally, ironically, the victims DO become abstract - simply that, victims. We know there is more to people than a handful of photographs and highly partial witness.

One of my strongest memories of my grandparents farm was of watching the 1972 Olympics on their TV while vacationing there. I have faint memories of the tragedy that transpired thirty odd years ago and watching this documentary brings it all back for me.

This is one of the best documentaries out there. It tells simply and clearly what happened and why. Using both news footage of the event and interviews conducted recently, amazingly the interviews include one with the only surviving terrorist who is now in hiding, this story tells the tale completely and compellingly. You get sucked into it even though you know whats going to happen, or think you do. The amazing thing about this film is that even if you know what happened it still manages to surprise you with new information that wasn't available before.

This is a sad story told compellingly.

Watching this documentary is a harrowing experience. I think the DVD version is unique in that even its menu page looks terrifying. By the end of the film, however, I was more angry than scared, because of the amazing level of incompetence German and Olympic officials showed in handling the hostage situation. The media also behaved abominably, broadcasting play-by-play accounts of the police's plans right into the ears of the terrorists. It made me think that the Bush administration might be partially correct in keeping the media in the dark about American military activities in Afghanistan.

I don't understand why some people felt the film didn't give the "context" of the kidnapping. I think Jamal al Gashey, the only kidnapper left alive now, explained quite clearly why he did what he did. But if the film had spent an extra hour discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, would that have made a difference? In my mind, nothing justified the kidnapping of athletes who by their very presence at the Olympics were trying to further world understanding. I can't think of many things that do justify holding innocent hostages for ransom. The director seems to feel that way too. Apparently that makes the movie too biased for some viewers.

As for the comment that the movie "demonizes" the kidnappers, I don't agree. The filmmakers include a German official's statement that, if he had met him in a different situation, he would have liked the terrorist spokesman, Issa. al Gashey tells some very human stories, such as an ironic account of getting into the Olympic village with the help of American athletes out after curfew, and he insists that the plan was never to murder the Israelis. And al Gashey's brief but affecting account of being exiled from his childhood village does a lot more to argue the Palestinian side of the conflict than any brutal hostage-taking scheme. Too bad he never has realized that.

Interestingly, filmmaker Kevin MacDonald wrote that in Israel he has been accused of giving too much time to the Palestinians. He also notes that Simon Reeve wrote a companion book to the movie, because "there were many aspects of the story we could not include in a 90-minute film." It's a pity the existence of the book isn't publicized more (assuming it's any good).

I do wish the film had spent more time discussing the aftermath of the tragedy, and that MacDonald had used his incredible opportunity of interviewing the last remaining terrorist to ask him some more hard-hitting questions, instead of being satisfied with a step-by-step account of what the kidnappers did that day. (However, I just read that it was extremely difficult for MacDonald to get al Gashey to talk at all.

I wasn't completely convinced that the Germans colluded with the terrorists in the Lufthansa hijacking, and would have liked to see evidence for that. I would also have liked to learn more about the Black September group. Basically, I think the film should have been longer. If it was kept to its current length for some marketing reason, I think the sponsoring studio should rethink that rule.

However, the only choice I really wish the filmmaker had not made was to accompany extremely gruesome shots of bodies with loud psychedelic music. It would have been more respectful to show the images in silence.

Watching the film in light of the events of a day in September of 2001, and after, makes me think that the world hasn't come very far since 1972, in terms of solving the Middle East's problems.

It would appear that many people believe that the documentary format should be held to some sort of objective, news-gathering standard. Whenever two clips are spliced together, regardless of the content there is some editorializing. A documentary is an editorial. If you want nothing more than unopinionated truth, than the only avenue open to you is uninterrupted security camera footage. You can, and sometimes should, disagree with the opinions offered by the documentary filmmaker as a critical viewer, but one faulting the filmmaker for offering an opinion is like criticizing water for being wet. The line that must be discerned is whether the filmmaker is overly deceptive or insidious in trying to convince you of his or her opinion. This is a line that can be very difficult to draw.

Mr. Ruvi Simmons of London does not seem to realize these basic tenets of documentary film-making: "One Day in September, however, concentrates more on the human interest of the event itself, neglecting background information in order to convey a one-sided and grossly biased perspective on a tragic occurrence." I am a filmmaker, and I know that as such one must choose a theme and a perspective for a feature length documentary. The main problem that this person has with the film is that he is "that it neither explores the underlying issues behind the Israeli-Palestinian tensions." This is a 2 hour film, not a 40 hour mini-series. There is no way that the filmmaker could have adequately explored the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and still told the story that he or she intended: the story of the hostage crisis at the Games of '72. Mr. Simmons also took offense at the filmmaker for vilifying the terrorists who perpetrated this plot. I do not need to offer a critical retort as any logical person can understand why this statement is foolishness. It sounds as though Mr. Simmons feels as though the terrorists were justified in hurting innocent athletes a continent removed from their conflict. Obviously, this person would dislike this documentary (although he does not mention that the documentarian interviewed one of the terrorists to present his side of their story).

If you want to have a solid introduction to the acts of terrorism at the Games of '72, then this is a good work to watch. It is true that the thriller-style is a bit gimmicky, but it does add somewhat to the suspense if you do not know the outcome. If you are intending to see the film, "Munich," then this is probably a good primer (I have not yet seen it as it has not been released). Just remember, this film is just as much an editorial as Spielburg's film will be.

~C

I believe that what happened at the 1972 Olympics established a template for a good deal of future terrorist activity. This incident demonstrated for the first time that you could gain a world stage and the world's attention by committing an atrocity. The press has played a tacit role in terrorism since that time. Terrorists are looking for media coverage and know that the best way to get that is by executing attacks at prominent events or on large population centers.

Re. the film, the fact that the German security forces were unprepared is no surprise as there was no precedent for this type of incident in the past. Sadly, many countries including most western countries are quite prepared now.