One Day in September
Directed by Kevin MacDonald.
Narrated by Michael Douglas.
This is a documentary about the hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Germany viewed the ‘Olympics of Peace and Joy’ as an opportunity to lay some of its ghosts to rest in an exhibition of goodwill, relaxation and modernity. However, the Palestinian Black September terrorist group, seeking political leverage and a rostrum, penetrated the athletes’ village at 4 o’clock one morning and took captive nine Israeli athletes and coaches, threatening to kill them unless 236 Palestinian political prisoners and criminals were released. The international media descended, giving live reports to a transfixed world public. The I.O.C. and the German authorities seemed unable and unwilling to grasp what was going on. When the latter did respond it was with extraordinary ineptitude, producing a litany of unbelievable incompetence which would have been funny had the situation not been so grim and, ultimately, tragic.
It could just be the film-makers’ self-focus but, apparently, the events of the hostage crisis had never before been satisfactorily investigated and described — not even by the German authorities, who seemed to want the whole business forgotten. The Bavarian police who had been involved were threatened with the loss of their pensions if they gave interviews. However, almost all of the main players were persuaded at least to make a statement to camera. One particular achievement was gaining an interview with the sole surviving terrorist who, following systematic assassinations of his compatriots by Israeli secret agents, has been living in hiding for decades and is, by all accounts, quite paranoid. Apart from these interviews, the film consists of contemporary news footage, supplemented by a few computer reconstructions.
Another point of interest in the subject matter is as a period piece, its representation of contemporary behaviour (the 1970s was the era of hijackings), attitudes (the naivety of all the parties involved, from the German government and police, to the journalists, onlookers, and the terrorists themselves), and the designs and fashions. The film starts off with some wonderfully tacky and dated advertisements, full of bad hair, primary-coloured everything, and steel-and-concrete modernist architecture.
The events depicted played out with a terrible sense of inevitability, laden with understated tension and horror. This film is thoroughly gripping and involving.
Guy Olding
