When it comes to art, the word “apolitical” serves largely as a kind of grand delusion. You can’t simply shake the meaning and implication out of words and images like they’re a dusty, old carpet; and neither can people simply switch off morality and emotion, conscious or subconscious, like a button on a machine.
Such concepts have a hollowing effect on September 5 (pronounced “September Five”), Tim Fehlbaum’s film about the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, during which eight gunmen from the Palestinian militia Black September killed two members of the Israeli team, taking a further nine members hostage. In a failed rescue attempt, all nine athletes were killed, alongside five of the eight Black September members and a West German police officer. It’s a moment that’s been channelled into worthwhile cinema before: its aftermath was famously covered by Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005), whose script, penned by Eric Roth and Tony Kushner, showed far more interest in engaging with the moral and emotional underpinnings of Israeli and Palestinian violence.
