 One Day in September (2000) The film's strength lies in its navigation of the murky politics and ambiguous intents of the people involved. German policemen and politicians demonstrated nothing less than totally baffling ineffectiveness in dealing with the situation, which seems like it would have been easy enough to neutralize by calling in, like, SWAT. Their inability to resolve things peacefully illustrates a huge divide between their desire to not be construed as Nazis and their reputation for absolute efficiency. The spectre of Nazism seems to be the real culprit in their failure to save the athletes, though the facts of the matter suggest that perhaps they were just bumbling idiots ill-prepared to handle something of this nature. The abundance of footage allows for a minute-by-minute pacing that gives One Day in September the feel of a big-budget thriller as opposed to a boring old History Channel documentary. Minimal narration (by Michael Douglas) threads the story, but otherwise it plays out via period newscast clips and photographs. The interviews represent the various sides of the situation—a widow of one of the slain athletes, German officials, and, amazingly, one of the terrorists, who speaks unrepentently, eliminating the propagandist closure we probably really want. One amazing scene shows one of the athletes who survived returning to the scene and recreating what happened to him. It's this unflinching willingness to simply face everything that transpired that helps to make this film one of the most captivating documentaries ever made. Another cool element was its acknowledgement of the athletes' collective reaction to the crisis: that it was mainly an obstacle to the competitions for which they had trained for years. Still, the Olympics footage, placed in context of the timing of events, takes on real gravitas. (A scene in the underrated Steve Prefontaine biopic Without Limits recreates this aspect pretty well, if you're interested, nerdo.) The complications that arise, scene after scene, are outrageous to behold … if someone were to use this plot for a terrorist thriller today, it would be deemed ridiculous, as well as off-puttingly unsatisfying. But that makes the movie all the deeper, because instead of the cocky, wisecrackin' heroes takin' down the bad guys, here things are much more cloudy, and don't work out at all like you'd expect. September could have benefitted from a deeper study of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that was the basis for the terrorists' actions, though admittedly I'm glad not to have had to sit through that. Yeah, yeah, it was tragic, but I still want to be able to eat my popcorn and not think so goddamn much. I mean, I already got my damn diploma, what the hell do I need to learn anything for nowadays? Personal enrichment? Ha, that's a good one.
Review by Gardyloo Gully |