SEPTEMBER 5 Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Tim Fehlbaum
Stars: Peter Sarsgarrd, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch, Benjamin Walker, Zinedine Soualem, Georgina Rich, Corey Johnson.
The 1972 Olympic Games in Munich were intended to be a showcase for the modern. New Germany to show to the world how the country had moved on from the dark days of WWII and the Third Reich. But the Games were mired in tragedy when terrorists from the Black September arm of the PLO entered the Olympic Village and took eleven Israeli athletes and their coach hostage. The situation exposed how undertrained and unprepared the German police force was to deal with such a situation.
The drama largely played out on television as it was captured by the ABC cameras and their sports journalists who were there to commentate on the Games. Their broadcast centre was close to the village where the hostage drama was playing out and they argued that they should be the ones to cover the crisis rather than veteran journalists based in New York.
The events of this dark day became the first act of terrorism televised live on television. An estimated global audience of 900 million people watched their coverage of the drama, more than had watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon only three years earlier.
September 5 is a powerful dramatisation of this day that scarred the Olympic Games. The action is largely confined to the ABC makeshift broadcast studio, which gives the film a claustrophobic feel, and the drama unfolds largely from the point of view of the broadcast crew. It was here that veteran ABC sports executive Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard, from An Education, etc) had to make some tough decisions while resisting calls to hand over the reins to proper journalists. Heading the production team was ambitious young producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro, from Munich, etc). His mentor Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin, from Snowden, etc), the head of daily operations, was harried as he also had to contend with some thorny ethical and moral issues and the politics of television broadcasting. The interactions between the crew create some minor moments of tension and drama. Bader and Mason clash over how best to proceed when covering the story. “Can we show someone being shot on live television?” one of the crew asks.
Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch, from The Teachers’ Lounge, etc) was a German interpreter who was able to listen in to the police radio and keep the team informed as to what was happening. The sports reporters had no experience of reporting hard news, but Arledge fought for his team to continue their reporting as they were on the spot. His decisions allow the film to explore ethical questions about journalism
September 5 was written by Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum (The Colony, etc), Moritz Binder (a veteran of German tv series), and first-time feature writer Alex David, who bring a gritty authenticity to the material. It’s not surprising that their script has been nominated for an Oscar.
The film plays out almost like a fly on the wall docudrama. Fehlbaum and his cinematographer Markus Forderer uses handheld cameras to bring a sense of energy to the static setting. They give the film the authentic look, gritty aesthetic and texture of a film shot in the 70s. The production design from Julian R Wagner is superb as he recreates their cramped studio. The production crew also capture the old school technology available to the television crews – there were no mobile phones or computers, the cameras were massive, and the tv crews had to be resourceful in the ways they worked around the limitations and smuggled film out of the village when it had been locked down by the police.
The film also effortlessly mixes archival footage with grainy newsreel footage from the ABC footage of the games that plays out on television monitors, which further adds to the realism and immediacy of the drama. Editor Hansjorg Weissbrich has done a superb job of incorporating the archival footage into the dramatic recreations. Fehlbaum ramps up the claustrophobic tension for most of the economical 95 minutes running time, and September 5 is an undeniably gritty and emotionally wrought historical drama.
The performances from the ensemble cast are superb, capturing their mix of excitement, fear and uncertainty. Sargsgaard brings a world-weary quality to his performance as the veteran Arledge.
Kevin MacDonald’s gripping and well-researched Oscar winning 1999 documentary One Day In September also covered this tragedy, albeit from a different perspective. And this hostage crisis formed the dramatic opening to Steven Spielberg’s gritty 2005 thriller Munich, which dealt more with the aftermath of the situation. Nonetheless, September 5 is one of the best films about journalists and the ethics of journalism along the lines of films such as All The President’s Men and The Post.
★★★★
