September 5 (Photo – Paramount Pictures)
When did our window on the world become a mirror?
September 5
Directed by Tim Fehlbaum – 2024
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
Opinions range from McLuhan’s first intimation of a global village to the novelist Bruce Wagner’s fanciful citing of the blooper reel as leading to a “fatal reality leak.”
More likely this turn to the self-referential, the narcissistic, even, was born in violence—the assassination of JFK, perhaps—though a new film, September 5, suggests that 9/5/72 is a significant marker.
That was when an ABC film crew in Munich to cover the Olympics found themselves positioned to document the taking and murdering of Israeli athletes by terrorists (the word born, according to the movie, by the need to give a name to the kidnappers). The film, done documentary style, with a lot of handheld shots, shows the team of reporters covering an event on the fly for which there was no precedent or preparation.
While tense, sleep-deprived, and anxious the team of technicians and reporters want this story for their own once they began to cover it. They resist the news’ department trying to hijack it for their domain and the terrorists for propaganda, the latter seen as shadows and silhouettes, though one masked man leaning over a balcony parapet became an iconic image. The control room in which most of the action takes place is rendered so well that we can sense the character’s grimy devotion to the tragedy thrust upon them.
“We waited for something to happen so we could take a picture of it,” says one character, glumly summing up the final confrontation.
A quote like that seems like a boilerplate for the world that has evolved.
And while it’s inaccurate to say such a horrible event is an exercise in nostalgia, I couldn’t help but watch magnetic tape, walkie-talkies, and even old ads evoke another time—more innocent, perhaps, but already subject to an insidious corruption.
Docudramas can easily go wrong, the re-creation of events coming through as just that. September 5 makes you feel as if you’re watching the real thing. When at the end of the movie one character says, “Now back to the real world, though this seems like the unreal world,” we realize that world, that reality, has been changed by what we saw.
Playing at Laemmle Town Center 5, Laemmle Monica Film Center, Laemmle Claremont 5, and Laemmle Newhall.
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