September 5 details role of media at 1972 Olympics in Munich

The massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich has already been the subject of two high-profile films. An Oscar-winning documentary, One Day in September, gave an overall look at the events of the day, while Steven Spielberg’s Munich focused on the Israeli effort to enact revenge on those responsible for the murders.

Instead of trying to make sense of the hows and whys of that tragic day, the new September 5 centers on how the crew of ABC, which was broadcasting the games, made the hard turn from showing sports into covering a news story with global impact.

ABC Sports President Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), vice president Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), and their team find themselves having to negotiate tricky territory when Palestinian terrorists take members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage on the morning of September 5. With their studios located very close to the Olympic village, they are in the unique position of covering the breaking news better than anyone else could.

They scramble to deploy their resources, including reporter Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker), German interpreter Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), and assistant Carter Jeffrey (Marcus Rutherford), to get as much information as possible. Because of the unpredictable nature of the situation, though, they have to make a lot of hard choices, including whether or not they should show someone getting shot on live television.

Written and directed by Tim Fehlbaum, and co-written by Moritz Binder and Alex David, the film does an excellent job of demonstrating the eternal dilemma of journalists of how to report on tragic events. Not only do they worry about the impact that showing actual violence could have on viewers, but also that their close coverage can be seen by the terrorists inside the dormitories. Every decision they make and every word said by lead anchor Jim McKay is subject to second guessing, a pressure made worse by the fact that they have to move quickly to stay on top of the story.

The film takes place almost entirely within ABC’s studio, a choice that could have made it claustrophobic were it not for the dynamic filmmaking and editing of Fehlbaum and his team. The behind-the-scenes workings of the broadcast come alive with walk-and-talks through the building, shots of screens showing footage of the terrorists and McKay hosting the coverage, and a barrage of phone calls and conversations on walkie talkies that keep the 90-minute film moving at a brisk pace.

The politics of the situations are mostly kept at arm’s length, although they do crop up in various small ways. Not only is there the Israeli-Palestinian side of the equation, but there’s also the fact that the incident is taking place in what was then known as West Germany, which was still trying to rehab its reputation after World War II. Fehlbaum and his co-writers address this element with nuance, understanding that whatever blowback there would be on Germans would pale in comparison to what the hostages were going through.

What makes the film work as well as it does are the uniformly understated performances by each of the actors. The inherent stress of that fateful day could have led Sarsgaard, Chaplin, Magaro, and others to modulate their voices up, but they all choose to stay even-keeled. There’s still plenty of emotion in how they play their scenes, but because they stay in control it lends an extra degree of gravity to the film as a whole.

The date of September 5, 1972 is one of those watershed dates in history, one that continues to resonate because of the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict. The coverage of the events of that day was crucial to its indelibility, and September 5 shows that the drama of how it was accomplished was compelling as well.

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September 5 is now playing in select theaters; it opens wide on January 17.