Peter Sarsgaard as Rooney Arledge
“SEPTEMBER 5” My rating: A- (In theaters)
95 minutes | MPAA rating: R
After viewing D.W. Griffith’s silent classic “The Birth of a Nation,” President Woodrow Wilson was supposed to have called the experience “like writing history with lightning.”
I’ve always regarded that comment as hyperbolic and perhaps a bit naive (after 70 plus years of moviegoing I’m rarely left in awe), but watching Tim Fehlbaum’s riveting docudrama “September 5” I now understand what old Woodrow was feeling.
The subject is the terrorist attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics. But Fehlbaum and co-writers Moritz Binder and Alex Davis depict neither the Arab perpetrators nor the Israeli athletes who were their hostages. We don’t witness any gunfire. We don’t see any bodies.
Instead the tale is told exclusively from the perspective of the crew from ABC Sports, whose broadcast studio was only a few hundred feet from the dormitories where the drama was playing out.
These guys (and a few women) were there to cover the world’s biggest sporting event. In a matter of a minutes they had to pivot from sports/entertainment to a far more electrifying human drama.
They acquitted themselves admirably…but not without facing some thorny ethical dilemmas along the way.
These games were the first time a sporting event could be seen live around the world, thanks to a lone satellite that could pick up an audio/visual signal and distribute it globally.
The first challenge facing ABC sports chief Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) was commandeering satellite air time. That lone satellite was being shared by all the broadcast networks; each had staked out several hours each day in which to transmit their coverage.
Then, as it became clear just how dangerous the situation was, Arledge had to defy his bosses back in the States who wanted ABC News to take over. Arledge’s argument: We’re journalists, too, and we’re only a stone’s throw away from the scene of the crime. How’s a talking head in New York supposed to do any better?
Fehlbaum and company make extensive use of the actual broadcast footage from that day. On the studio monitors we see sports anchor Jim McKay providing commentary and interviewing various players in the unfolding tragedy.
And there are mini-dramas playing out against the bigger story. Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) was getting his first crack at directing Olympic coverage when he found himself in charge of images that were being seen in every corner of the globe. A real trial by fire.
Producer Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) raised moral questions. For instance, the families of the hostages were undoubtedly watching ABC’s coverage. How should the ABC team handle the on-air murder of an Israeli athlete? And what if the terrorists are watching the ABC broadcast in the dorm?
“September 5’s” is also mesmerizing in its depiction of TV technology of the era. ABC had no handheld video cameras. To get images of the crowd milling outside the dormitory, they had to haul an incredibly heavy studio camera out a door and across a patch of grass.
TV graphics were dumbfoundingly low-tech. To have the name of an interviewee appear at the bottom of the screen, a graphic artist had to spell out his name in white plastic letters (like a theater marquee), then superimpose that onto the broadcast feed
There are all sorts of head-smacking revelations. The German hosts of the games were so worried about raising memories of their Nazi past that they banned the military from providing security. Instead that job went to local police who were untrained and untested in terrorist situations. They cops at the games weren’t even carrying firearms.
Language was an issue, too. Incredibly, no one in ABC Sports spoke or understood German. Once the crisis broke a local intern (Leonie Benesch) was tasked with translating all the German communications for her without-a-clue employers.
More craziness…while the hostages were being held, athletes continued to compete just a block or two away.
“September 5” plays out in a breathless 95 minutes, but it’s got enough going on to stand up to repeated viewings.
So, yeah, it’s like writing history with lightning.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 