By Karl Quinn
SEPTEMBER 5 ★★★★½
(M) 95 minutes
You don’t need to work in the media to appreciate September 5, but my goodness, if you do, it will land with a particular impact. This tightly constructed, claustrophobic thriller is a dramatisation of the events of that date in 1972, when members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September infiltrated the Israeli quarters at the Olympic Village in Munich and took athletes and coaches hostage. The siege and escape attempt that followed left 17 people – including 11 of the Israelis – dead.
Where to look?: John Magaro as Geoffrey Mason.Credit: AP
Of course, the tale can’t help but have a chilling thud of resonance in the present moment, but it is in no sense a response to it. The film was in post-production when the Hamas raids of October 7, 2023 took place. And at any rate, its focus is not so much the raid (of 1972), the security forces’ response to it, or even the reasons it happened. September 5 is primarily concerned with the way it was reported.
Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) is a relatively inexperienced sports producer expecting to cover the rats-and-mice aspects of the Games when he starts his shift in the wee hours, because, frankly, nothing much is expected to happen. But when he hears what sounds like gunshots, and gets news they appear to have come from the athletes’ village, he realises there’s a big story afoot.
Soon, he’s joined by the sports team’s chief Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) and broadcast supervisor Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), and the scale of the story – and the challenge of how to cover it – becomes clear. It is both technical and ethical in nature.
Peter Sarsgaard as Roone Arledge in September 5.Credit: Paramount
This was a time before mobile phones, before email, when cameras were few, far between and enormously bulky and heavy. Simply recording a phone call was a massive challenge; putting it to air as it happened was practically impossible. Even on-screen titles and graphics posed difficulties: they had to be printed out, photographed with a still camera, and superimposed onto the image being broadcast.
The ABC sports team had no choice but to improvise, to develop ad hoc solutions on the spot, even as the story was taking them in directions they couldn’t foresee or plan for. (That is, after all, the nature of news.) And just to add to the complexity, most of what is happening is doing so in a language they don’t speak, which makes Marianne (Leonie Benesch), a lowly German production assistant, arguably the most important person on the team.
The technical stuff – almost all of which plays out within the tight confines of the broadcast studio – is fascinating. But the meat of September 5 lies elsewhere, in the big moral questions it poses.
Mason, Arledge and Bader repeatedly wrestle with what to report, and how to report it. Does covering a terrorist act reward those who perpetrate it? Is there an ethical obligation to bear unwavering witness to whatever horrors might unfold, or conversely to shield viewers from it? Where should one point a camera if there’s a risk it might capture and broadcast a murder in real-time?
This isn’t the first movie to be made about the events of September 5, 1972 – Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film Munich and Kevin MacDonald’s 1999 documentary One Day in September also go there. But it is the first to put the spotlight squarely on the media’s response.
More than half a century on – and with what is covered, by whom, and to what end constantly in question – it could hardly be more timely.
September 5 is in cinemas on February 6.
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