Steven Spielberg’s new film “War of the Worlds” opened Wednesday, and I’d like to go see it at some point (eh, I can wait for DVD). Lately, of course, the movie’s star has been making headlines, what with robbing the craddle, sprouting off on shit he doesn’t seem to comprehend, and getting sprayed with water.
But in a few months time, it’ll probably be Spielberg in the center of an actual … y’know … controversy. The director is doing a film based on Israel’s retaliation against the terrorists who executed the Israeli Olympic team in Munich. The New York Times elaborates:
Mr. Spielberg has taken risks before: he said he feared being seen as trivializing the Holocaust when he directed “Schindler’s List” in 1993, at a time when he was best known for blockbuster fantasies like “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” And with “Saving Private Ryan,” he gambled successfully on audiences’ tolerance for prolonged and bloody combat scenes.
But with the as-yet-untitled Munich film, already scheduled for Oscar-season release by Universal Pictures on Dec. 23, Mr. Spielberg is tackling material delicate enough that he and his advisers are concerned about adverse effects on matters as weighty as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process if his project is mishandled - or misconstrued in the public mind.
Indeed, the movie’s terrain is so packed with potential land mines that, associates say, Mr. Spielberg has sought counsel from advisers ranging from his own rabbi to the former American diplomat Dennis Ross, who in turn has alerted Israeli government officials to the film’s thrust. Mr. Spielberg has also shown the script to Mr. Ross’s old boss, former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton’s aides said Mr. Spielberg reached out to him first more than a year ago and again as recently as Tuesday. Mr. Spielberg is also being advised by Mike McCurry, Mr. Clinton’s White House spokesman, and Allan Mayer, a Hollywood spokesman who specializes in crisis communications.
The film, which is being written by the playwright Tony Kushner - it is his first feature screenplay - begins with the killing of 11 Israeli athletes in Munich. But it focuses on the Israeli retaliation: the assassinations, ordered by Prime Minister Golda Meir, of Palestinians identified by Israeli intelligence as terrorists, including some who were not directly implicated in the Olympic massacre. By highlighting such a morally vexing and endlessly debated chapter in Israeli history - one that introduced the still-controversial Israeli tactic now known as targeted killings - Mr. Spielberg could jeopardize his tremendous stature among Jews both in the United States and in Israel.
He earned that prestige largely for his treatment of the Holocaust in “Schindler’s List” and for his philanthropic efforts, through the Shoah Foundation, to preserve testimonies of survivors of the concentration camps. Until now, though, he has been relatively quiet on Middle East politics compared with more vocal American supporters of Israel.
Making matters more complicated, an important source for Mr. Spielberg’s narrative is a 1984 book by George Jonas, “Vengeance,” based largely on the account of a purported member of the Mossad’s assassination team, whose veracity was later widely called into question.
Friends of Mr. Spielberg said he was keenly aware that admirers of his Holocaust work could misunderstand his new film and regard it as hurtful to Israel. And they noted that he had never before courted controversy so openly. “A lot of people around him never thought he’d make the movie,” said one associate, who asked not to be identified, in keeping with Mr. Spielberg’s preference for secrecy.
Mr. Spielberg’s interest in the question of a civilized nation’s proper response to terrorism deepened, aides said, after the 9/11 attacks, as Americans were grappling for the first time with similar issues - for instance, in each new lethal strike on a suspected terrorist leader by a C.I.A. Predator drone aircraft. In Mr. Kushner’s script, people who have read it say, the Israeli assassins find themselves struggling to understand how their targets were chosen, whether they belonged on the hit list and, eventually, what, if anything, their killing would accomplish.
And people thought The Passion of the Christ was controversial …