on the one hand, a very angry and disillusioned portrayal of losing your faith in government and nation following acts of state sanctioned violence. on the other, an exploration of "they made us do this" instead of a true depiction of the reasons why Black September happened, what the Palestinian people experience to this day under the Israeli regime and a work that's still too enamoured with Israel's "right to exist" to dismantle it in the way it should be. Spielberg is obviously torn between the love of what he considers the homeland and the actions of violence taken by Mossad, but there's never any humanisation of the people his characters are sent to kill, any understanding of why these people are doing this. they are framed as the other, because framing them as anything else would challenge the state and its right to exist. it is easier to criticise the government by making the Palestinian faceless and silent outside of the people they murder, because you can criticise an agency like Mossad and the current government without truly challenging the foundations of blood and genocide that cause Israel to exist. it is more like Body of Lies than it is something more profound, a work that tries and maybe does believe that it's challenging the system, that it's breaking away from the propaganda and deconstructing Wars on Terror, but that ends up revelling in the same violence and the same propaganda just with a different skin. it is a very interesting movie built on conflict, similarly to how Eric Bana's protagonist is constantly reconciling with his beliefs in his country and his beliefs in his religion, which is why I understand the love for this. there are war movies that are built upon inherent conflict that I love, that I'll defend, that I reckon with constantly and come out the other side positive on. but to me, this is cruelty to the Palestinian people, that rewrites history to ignore Israel's past, that centres murderers and biased perspectives over truth and compassion with the oppressed, that claims to be about both sides that's only about the splintered sections of one. this is clearly a movie Spielberg had to make, and for some, it may be his masterpiece. for me, it's nothing but sound and fury.
