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This is a meaningful film of deep meditation in which Director
Spielberg draws parallelism in connoting the similarity between
the ungrounded vengeance of the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir
(Lynn Cohen)'s cabinet on the Palestinian terrorists and that of
the Bush administration on Iraq, alongside a theme on the futility
of the karma of endless vengeances.
As the fact in history is well known to the audience, Spielberg
uses unrestricted narrative in the chasing sequences (the first
90 mins) to enable a global view of the audience and restricted
narrative in the last hour to centripetally escort the mind of the
audience back to the thematic issue of the meaning of revenge and
thereby effectively presents a fair balance between filmic tension
& political ideology.
To add vividness to the narrative, Spielberg builds variations
in chasing & assassinations to create variety and tension on
how the Palestinian assassins are killed one by one by Avner (Eric
Bana)'s team. Complexity is added with the presence of the female
assassin, which also serves as the turning point on Avner's team
on the direction and correctness of their mission. Low angle shots
are used frequently to depict the powerfulness of Avner's team.
Three flashback sequences are inserted at certain interval in the
screen time of 164 mins to reveal the death of the 11 Israeli hostages
of the Black September incident in 1972. Spielberg adopts a structured
narrative arrangement in a way so that as Avner queries more on
the act he is commanded to commit, the narrative reveals more on
the 1972 incident with Avner's emotion progressively escalating
from calmness to agitation. The theme is explicitly expounded in
the sequence of encounter between Avner's team and the Palestinians
in the abandoned building.
The factual details of the Black September incident are finely
made in accordance with the history. The entire film is slow paced
on the whole and it flows smoothly throughout. Prior knowledge on
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would enhance the audience's understanding
of the movie. Spielberg does not fill all gaps and uses open ending
to perpetuate the meditation of the audience. It is a good film.
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