SEPTEMBER 5 - Mark Reviews Movies

September 5, Paramount Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 12, 2024

No one expected it. No one seems to have imagined it as a possibility, even. That's partly how eight armed individuals entered the Olympic Village in Munich on the morning of September 5, 1972, killed two members of the Israeli team in their apartment, and took nine others hostage. There's a lot that could be said about the security failures that led to this, as well as too many other subjects to count in regards to the ever-continuing tension, crises, and hostilities in the Middle East. However, September 5 keeps its distance from all of that. It's a film about journalism in the middle of a catastrophe.

Its viewpoint is with reporters, trying to piece together a story as it unfolds almost right in front of them. They're also attempting to ensure that the news gets out live to as many people as possible, and it forces its characters to question everything about their responsibilities as journalists, their jobs, and, to an extent, their humanity. They did not expect to be reporting on a story that starts with two Olympians being murdered. They almost certainly could not have imagined that part of their conversations on this particular day, about midway through the Olympic Games, would on the topic of whether or not they could or should show someone being killed on live television.

Those moral and ethical challenges come almost as frequently as the logistical ones in co-writer/director Tim Fehlbaum's film, which doesn't stop for the characters or the audience to really wrestle with those quandaries. In the moment, these people don't have the benefit of time to have those in-depth conversations, because each and every moment denies them of it. They can only do the best they can under the circumstances, and being as ill-prepared as they are, these characters probably make plenty of mistakes, might cause even more problems for the police, and quite possibly put the hostages at even greater risk than they already are.

We can see this with hindsight, that great and terribly convenient way of pushing blame in the aftermath, but one of the great elements of Fehlbaum's film is how it always remains in the present tense of its story. It shows us characters who are good—very good, in fact, in ways they only realize when under this kind of pressure—at their jobs, have hard and fast sets of beliefs—sometimes conflict with those of others in the same room—about what the news is supposed to do, and only too late comprehend the full weight of the responsibility they had.

As the hostage crisis happens, though, the team at the sports branch of ABC's news division only sees three distinct responsibilities: to witness the event occur, try to assemble as much information as they can on the fly, and get images of this broadcast live back home to the United States. Anything else can wait until later, either when it becomes an unavoidable necessity to discuss or in the aftermath, when it's too late to do anything but attempt to live with any regrets and move forward.

The news offices here, across the street from the Olympic Village, are packed with people, but the screenplay, written by the director with Moritz Binder and Alex David, focuses primarily on four characters. They're sports division president Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), lower-level executive Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), local German interpreter Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), and newly arrived broadcast operations manager Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro).

Geoffrey's saved for last in that list because he does become main focal point of the narrative, trying to keep the broadcast and its multiple components going, while often needing to improvise, figure out how to do the seemingly impossible, and be the final decision-maker of what images to show and what information to make public. Magaro's performance here gets at the core of the entire film's tone and larger thematic purpose, as he plays a calm, collected professional, who's certain of his skills and his ability to tell a story, until moments arrive when his talents might be too good, forcing him to wonder if he has been telling the story in a proper way.

Before any of the game's competitions occur, Geoffrey is on duty in the early morning hours when people in the studio hear distant gunshots—then more of them—coming from the direction of the Olympic Village. Local police reports confirm the shots and the location, and soon enough, the manager has to call off Marvin's nap, bring Roone back from his hotel room, and send reporter Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker) to the apartment complex with a camera operator, while also having crewmembers push a live-broadcast camera to a knoll overlooking the scene.

The effect of all of these pieces is overwhelming at first, as it must be for the characters it's happening to in the studio. Fehlbaum's filmmaking gradually makes complete sense of it all—showing us the assorted processes of putting together a live broadcast, from setting up on-screen graphics to preparing 16 mm film for television, and the investigatory work needed to ensure that any information going out on air is accurate.

The film is always in motion, not only in the constant momentum of the plotting, but also in the handheld cinematography of Markus Förderer, which is claustrophobic and queasy, while also blending seamlessly with footage from the real broadcast itself. For example, Jim McKay, the sports journalist who takes over in the studio while the more knowledgeable Jennings is on site, is portrayed here by way of contemporaneous broadcast segments from the real McKay, with editor Hansjörg Weißbrich piecing together the behind-the-scenes dramatization and reality in an often eerily authentic way.

On a technical level, the film is a feat of subtle wizardry, but the drama, the debates, and the performances, with Sarsgaard as the man thinking about broad ideals of journalism—not to mention ratings—and Chaplin as the only one voicing concerns about matters of conscience, are never overshadowed by any of that. September 5 gives us a sense of history being reported as it happens and of tragedy finally making those reporters contemplate if they did the right thing.

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