guide: 1. Statue of Mistral, Place du Forum, Arles 2. Santons in store window, Arles 3. X-Mas decoration, Arles 4. X-Mas Market on the Cours Mirabeau, Aix-en-Provence 5. Gazebo, tourist office and manège, Arles 6. Rue Gambetta, Arles 7. X-mas tree and Nord Penis hotel (hee hee hee...), Arles
Being Darling
Dru Dubrov
One o’clock
My ears are burning in the cold and they are about to sliver through my cheeks, separating my jaw bones. I shaved my face this morning—trying something new; “the establishment of routines is a poetic of the soul,” said my uncle Solli. Already, I can feel the follicle standing like pin feathers on a blistered chicken. Heat and cold will cook or preserve to the same extremes. I smell the abject solitude of over-watered eyes freezing on wind-charred flesh. My face is sleeted—I smell my own flesh freezing and I glimpse its organic—carbon, charred—tempered and trusted mortality. The sound of the holiday carrousel in the central plaza makes me think of unfinished housework and I sob uncontrollably like a snow-sled in the ocean, all the way to my green-glass office building. I take the stairs up to my mahogany door on the third floor in order to avoid other office renters whom I don’t know, but who still try and talk to me, anyhow.
Two o’clock
Sitting in the office, and staring at my wall. I think that this is not my office, and how arduous it can be to rent for so long. And, as if it had heard these aching thoughts, my watch exudes a viscous puss of time. Cheryl calls me—the puss of minutes has oozed into my cell phone, making it ring—little demons inside feeding on the rotten discharges of pre-paid and wasted seconds. I answer with the dread of the cat in a crate on his way to be poked, prodded and USDA certified.
“Hello…” I say ‘hello’ slowly and softly, because you have to be civil if you want to keep a girlfriend, it seems.
“Hello?” She asks. As if the connection was gone.
“Hello…” I say again.
“Hey Darling! what time is dinner tonight?”
“Dinner…, umm…” Dammit!
“Yeah, dinner…”
“…um…seven-thirty?” As good a time as any, I think.
“Okay, I’ll pick you up at seven.”
She’ll pick me up. Like a prisoner. Do I dare cooperate?
“Alright. Miss you…” I cooperate.
“Bye darling.”
I’m someone’s darling, which is like being constantly satiated to the extent ambrosia can fatten a soul. But the darling is a soul—a memory like a wax-paper-pressed ream of autumn’s leaves—that that sweet season should be preserved and lived over and over again as a lamp. I am cocooned with significance in her darling and my heart races for fear that I will hatch, a half-formed larva, and lie naked in the dread air, gasping for my cocoon to entrap me into her darling again. I dread the hatching—frightened that the blisters of pussy time will ooze into my cocoon and that she will be so impelled to call me, no longer darling, but hideous silence.
Three o’clock
Reasoned fear of my computer comes like a cruel baton flying around the room. The bug inside the machine is a mutating garble of DNA. I am scared it will give me bird flu. Then, I will grow a beak and unwittingly bob and peck through, in staccatos, penetrating the thin silky covertures of what makes me darling. The bug extends to the office telephone set and I let my manager talk to the sobriety of my outgoing message. I sit back on the couch and the watch the stacks and papers cluttering my desk.
“…Ivan…hey, well, the University is closing their press—we could go more commercial, but then we would have to get out of some legal mess and hope that the market wants your essays in a larger distribution. I think
I replay the message until I can repeat it along with Joe. Then, I hear the cat’s tongue in the office next to mine—it’s Arlen the cat, Mr. Rosenbaum’s tabby. The sound is like sand paper on prison bars. Arlen is licking her asshole and looking cruelly for Mr. Rosenbaum, whom time has beaten into a mess of viscous oxygen tubes after eighty years of its affliction. I have his key but am frightened that his time will pass to me if I answer is phone and feed the cat.
Four o’clock
As I leave the office I don’t smell my own frozen flesh, which is good. But, somehow it doesn’t feel quite puss-y enough to be four o’clock. The day has grown mild. Quickly, I pass the carousel and leave its monotonous clunking behind. Then, I pray that my watch and car clock-radio and the rest of the news anchors are not playing a game, in which I am the victim, and its not really four o’clock at all. During the ride home, I hoarsely take in glimpses of autumn’s leaves, grieving like a throaty robin in a sycamore. I switch the radio station as I mount the freeway entrance ramp. Kate Smith is singing ‘G-d Bless
Now, the puss of time has lost me and I am temporarily free of its constraints. I roll down, the windows and feel the fresh breeze on my four o’clock shadow. I breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe—Stand Beside her, and guide her, through the night with the light from...
Half-Past four
I never really wanted to ask G-d for anything—I was never brought up to believe in Santa Clauses. But I did try to remind G-d a few times a year that I was trying to do a decent job. Once, a very famous rabbi was tortured in the belly of a whale until he grew the beard of a sage—he wrote a prayer after that. He didn’t ask for anything, just poetry.
My gas is running low, now. I pull into a station, stopping at pump three, behind a Lincoln Town Car. I flip the switch that will open my tank like a
My fantasy ends and I get out of my car and the smell of gasoline beards me like an Exxon merchant marine. I swim in the toxic perfume…enraptured in its lusty noxiousness. The owner of the
Five Minutes After Half-Past Four
When I get back in the car, I forget who I am for a moment. I repeat my name in the rear-view mirror one-thousand-and-three times and cry with the hum of my engine. I turn on the radio again; Kate Smith is still singing…The augur of a hawk sweeps over my windshield and I pass a run-down train platform: “This is my town/ O! tedious squalor/ Where is your Gate to Out/ You rusty bunghole!”...Ten more blocks and then Kate Smith concludes…My home sweet home.
Approaching Five o’clock
I walk into my rented ranch-home. I always am renting space and time. Getting published is like getting free rent and that is why it is my goal. I keep this in mind when I cross the threshold and greet my four cats like I am Snow-White. Herschel, Isaac, Zelda and Ethel are each Twenty-Two years old. For my seventh birthday, all four of my grandparents wanted to give me a cat. But they could not agree on one kitten, so each went behind the other’s back and bought me one each. Ethel limps forward on all three of her legs and walks past me in favor of scratching at the sofa. She keeps flipping to her right whenever she mounts the couch, pivoting on her sole hind leg. She dangles by her right paw until I relieve her of the apparent strain on her claws.
Isaac the cat is molting. But I figure that if he, at twenty-two, is only molting, then the viscous puss of time has been rather kind. His bald patches drag him pathetically across the floor. He drinks his water and coughs up the puss of age and blood. He is not as well as I think. Once, when I was nine, I shaved Isaac during Passover to make him my darling.
Jet black Zelda meows with the timbre of her pussy throatiness, beatifying the new hour’s arrival. “Meow! Meow! Meow! Meow! Meow!” she says, and then she slinks off to cross some unlucky stranger on the sidewalk
Herschel isn’t moving. He sleeps always in Isaacs litter. Day addicts, I think…the night is coming to withdraw you; to cocoon you in her “darling”. I refresh their food and water, sit in my favorite chair and contemplate what I should wear to dinner.
Six o’clock
I wake up from an inadvertent nap to the scratchy moisture of Isaac licking my face and leaving patches of fur on my chest. Isaac’s distinct scent drives me to the need to shower.
Undressing I see myself in the mirror and laugh that I look like such an adult. After sliding open the shower door, I turn the hand and play with the faucets until I find a temperature that suits me and I plunge in. But I have worn my watch into the shower. Suddenly, the viscous puss of time water-logs the precious jewelry, the cogs rust in an instant and the face fogs, unable to gaze out at me any longer. The puss of time washes down into the drain and fishes for flies in the sewer all the way along until it reaches the confines and combustibles of that water treatment facility, there. The watch is ruined; I am free of its puss-y constraints. I leave the shower, dry off and shave again. The air feels wondrously normal against my cheeks and the nape of my neck. In moments, putting together a shirt and slacks becomes a game. Jacket? Of course! Tie? Of course not!
Cheryl honks and I scramble out of the doorway in a good humor. The cats all hearken to me as if I were unfamiliar. Isaac scrambles behind the couch when he sees me. I hear him began to hack as I close the door.
Cheryl is in the Taurus. Time is not important. I have all of my neuroses gathered up like a troop of kids at summer camp. Lights out! will be strictly enforced.
I walk with sufficient jaunt and get into Cheryl’s Taurus. She leans over and asks me where we are going to eat. I tell her ‘Arnaud’s’. She say s that she ‘thought so’, and leans over to give me an embrace. I comply, even though I hate the car-reach over embrace.
“Mmm…” she says, “you smell wonderful.” Isaac hacks up some more puss. I can hear it coming from the house even as I get into her Taurus.
“You smell purdy,” I say and she laughs. I smile.
“Where are we going to eat?”
“Arnuad’s,” I say without hesitation. Even though I haven’t even bothered to call ahead and play the Arnaud’s game, I don’t worry myself.
“Great! I love Arnaud’s,” she says.
I smile and say that I knew she loved Arnaud’s and that that is why I have chosen it.
Cheryl smiles at me, taking her eyes off of the road. She swerves a bit and I start to get a little nervous. She turns her head back to where it should be and says, “You’re so darling.” I sink back into the car and revel in the security of my seat-belt. Lights blur past as the day grows darker.
“How was the office, today?”
“We’re going to try
“Are you going to quit at the community college if everything goes through.”
I’m surprisingly relaxed with the conversation. “Yes,” I say, “maybe go on the job market for a, dare I say, professorship somewhere.”
“That’d be darling,” Cheryl says.
“Yep,” I say, “darling.” And, as I say the word that carries all of my anxieties, we pull into the parking lot nearest Arnaud’s.
* * *
We walk two blocks before we reach Arnaud’s. In the car, I couldn’t tell, but now I see that Cheryl is wearing a white blouse with a lace overlay. The patterns are swirling and free, yet frank. She also wears a turquoise skirt. Her face crinkles up when she smiles and as we walk, she reaches for my hand. I take her think and tactile fingers in a loose grip. Rounding a busy intersection, the smell of the city rises from the street-vents and envelops our fresh clothes. Arnaud’s is on our right after we have rounded the corner. It’s a mild evening but the terrace at Arnaud’s is already closed for the impending winter. “Moondance” is playing inside the little crowded dining room. I like that Arnaud’s is crowded to its own wood beams and red walls. I like the anonymity a crowded restaurant gives; Arnaud’s is especially wonderful on account of its tables not being too close together.
A well-trimmed man at the bar that is to the left when we walk into Arnaud’s asks if we have made a reservation for the evening. I am about to say that we do not have a reservation. I don’t believe in reservations; I like to sit and people-watch before I am relaxed enough to digest my dinner. But, before I can say anything, Cheryl steps up to the barman and says—“Yeah, we are two for darling.” She crinkles her face in a smile as we are directed to follow the barman. I am not happy.
* * *
We sit at the table, waiting for wine that Cheryl has chosen; it’s a
“You’ll love it, darling,” she reassures me after seeing the face I’d tried so hard to suppress. And then its over, I glance at her wrist and see the surviving twin of our matching watches. The puss of time mounts and I feel it, like an acid fly, jitter up through my spinal column.
“What do you think about us?” Cheryl asks me.
“‘Two for darling,’” I say
“…Don’t you think we’re good for one another…?”
“Am I that predictable?”
“…And seeing as we’ve been together for so long…”
“Maybe I didn’t want reservation for a reason,” I reason.
“…Maybe we ought to get married for our own health.”
“I wanted to sit and chat and people watch.”
“Calm down.”
“Did you ever think that I might not have wanted to be settled this soon!”
“Well, that a bit rude!” she says.
“I’m not even relaxed yet; I can’t even digest anything yet!”
“Hello,” a waiter pops up and tells us a list of twenty-five ingredients that have been used to encrust ducks and lambs this evening. I’ve never known exactly what a rutabaga is and I am tempted to ask, but Cheryl asks him to come back.
“I’m taling about getting married,” she says.
I feel myself slipping out of the darling.
“I need to think about this alone,” I say, “I think I should go home.”
“Let’s talk about it now,” she says.
“I don’t want to right here.”
I get from the table and start to walk off. Her frankness about our situation hearkens to its own severity. I sit back down.
“What did you get up for,” she says. “You are so dramatic.”
We pass a quiet dinner. She drives me home; sex isn’t even an option. She tells me to call her in the morning. Isaac hacks up a puss-ball. I vacuum until the sound of the motor tires me out.
I listen to my mother on the message machine:
“So, you’re Brother Ricky called me and told me that you told him that you’re going to dinner with Cheryl tonight Arnaud’s. Then, Ricky told me that he had talked to grandma and she had told Ricky that Mr. Rosenbaum had called my her so that she would call Ricky who would call me and tell me that he had seen you at the Gas Station up on Kramer and that he was disappointed and thought that you were rude for avoiding him and not saying hello and that you were purposefully hiding and ‘did he think that Mr. Rosenbaum wouldn’t notice you ignoring him’. I hope you weren’t rude, because I said that I didn’t think that any son of mine would purposefully be rude but that even you try to avoid Mr. Rosenbaum, don’t worry. I would have done the same thing rather than talk to that man in his short shorts. One time, I swear that his peeper’s tip was sticking out!”
There’s another:
“So your aunt Silvia calls me and says that she’s seen her sister’s son arguing with nice girl in the middle of Arnaud’s and that she sees my all angry. She’s a really nice girl. She’s so nice. Oh, she the nicest. You should be so lucky!”
I go to the bedroom and pass out. Knowing full well that tomorrow I’ll look out through a cracked cocoon.
(jews do live in paris, and they gave simon and I a hannukiah!)
First, a poem:
Taught muscles of many dogs
waiting to be chosen for a hunt
emit pheramones as compulsory as harried nerves.
This is their destiny,
the two.
Some years are weary from too many puzzles,
too many rubixes, too many tasks so ugly that
they wouldn't merit an onion peel.
Nerves sense the wild fowl
and think that there will not be time.
They hear the whistle and cringe.
They pull sleighs without a question,
worrying. They taught their nerves (and bite down hard on their harnesses, exhaust themselves).
When, well, would the race
be finished before frost-bite
and gunshot arrived
had they not harried themselvies so?
The nerves, they prefer not to answer.
Rather, they harry for a quandarial cause.
Grandmother worries.
They all worry/ worry is human and such--that's what worry is. Human.
optional ending:
And I say, "You sound pretty sure for a dog."
"I'm a coyote," he says back. "A Jewish coyote." We laugh, nervously.
received article in e-mail...must respond...
article from Wall Street Journal will follow
my response (partial): When we have a financial magazine arguing cinema, we should all be scratching our heads. The film was, as I believe Spielberg described it, like a roarschach inkblot; you get out of it what you went in thinking before-hand. This is not to say that there is not some truth to the Stephen's article, however, assuming that the film picks up upon anti-semititc tropes is just ridiculous. If anything, the film explores how divisions and extremists tear apart the sould of anyone. These divisions, truthfully, are created and they are our realities. I saw the film as disturbing in its attempt to depict theis reality of the opowers of different apparatuses; either of the state or of the terrorist-network (or whatever it shall be called).
The film's flaw was its length. The death's of the Israelis were precisely marginaziled. This is Kushner's genius. They, the Israelis, were caught in the middle of apparatuses and used by all sides to further thier independent power structures. This is marginalization and trivialization; inter-cut with the sex scene in Kushner's script, the anxieties of Avner--to the point where his eyes must be covered and closed, as if he has died--explain physically the graphic and gratuitous use of death to achieve power.
I am in no way anti-Israel; I admire the state of Israel for protecting its and thus, my own, people. But this does not put Jews above playing as a power or state apparatus on the world stage. It think it is a bold and brave and necessary step that Jews take responsibility for their own actions. Many of the political theorists, after all, who have laid out the building blocks of todays ideological games, were Jews trying to make life better for others and themselves. This is just a short rant, I could go on longer...
Dru Dubrov
And now the article
Munich What's wrong with Steven Spielberg's new movie. BY BRET STEPHENS Sunday,
January 1, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Steven Spielberg wants you to know one thing about "Munich," his just-released, semihistorical, instantly controversial account of Israel's efforts to avenge the massacre of its athletes at the 1972 Olympics: "I worked very hard," he says, "so this film was not in any way, shape or form going to be an attack on Israel." So why is his movie raising such hackles among Israelis and those generally known as the "pro-Israel" crowd?
Maybe it has something to do with his choice of a screenwriter, Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright brought in by Mr. Spielberg to rework the original screenplay by Eric Roth. Mr. Kushner (who, like Mr. Spielberg, is Jewish) believes that the creation of the state of Israel was "a historical, moral, political calamity" for the Jewish people. He believes the policy of the government of Israel has been "a systematic attempt to destroy the identity of the Palestinian people." He believes that responsibility for making peace between Israelis and Palestinians lies primarily with the Israelis, "inasmuch as they are far more mighty." He believes Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is an "unindicted war criminal." \r\n Maybe it has something to do with Mr. Spielberg\'s curious use of "Jewish" tropes. Again and again in "Munich," the Israelis are seen counting the cost of each kill, down to the last dollar: $352,000 for an assassination in Rome; $200,000 for a bombing in Paris. "Killing Palestinians isn\'t exactly cheap," remarks one of the members of the Israeli team. A Frenchman in the business of retailing the whereabouts of wanted men praises Israeli squad leader Avner Kauffman (Eric Bana) because he pays "better than anyone." A Mossad officer warns Kauffman not to overspend his budget. "I want receipts," he says. \r\n Maybe it has something to do with the historical liberties Mr. Spielberg takes in telling the story. "Vengeance," the George Jonas book upon which the film is largely based, is widely considered to be a fabrication. The book is based on a source named Yuval Aviv, who claimed to be the model for Avner but was, according to Israeli sources, never in the Mossad and had no experience in intelligence beyond working as a screener for El Al, the Israeli airline. \r\n",1]
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Maybe it has something to do with his choice of a screenwriter, Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright brought in by Mr. Spielberg to rework the original screenplay by Eric Roth. Mr. Kushner (who, like Mr. Spielberg, is Jewish) believes that the creation of the state of Israel was "a historical, moral, political calamity" for the Jewish people. He believes the policy of the government of Israel has been "a systematic attempt to destroy the identity of the Palestinian people." He believes that responsibility for making peace between Israelis and Palestinians lies primarily with the Israelis, "inasmuch as they are far more mighty." He believes Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is an "unindicted war criminal." Maybe it has something to do with Mr. Spielberg's curious use of "Jewish" tropes. Again and again in "Munich," the Israelis are seen counting the cost of each kill, down to the last dollar: $352,000 for an assassination in Rome; $200,000 for a bombing in Paris. "Killing Palestinians isn't exactly cheap," remarks one of the members of the Israeli team. A Frenchman in the business of retailing the whereabouts of wanted men praises Israeli squad leader Avner Kauffman (Eric Bana) because he pays "better than anyone." A Mossad officer warns Kauffman not to overspend his budget. "I want receipts," he says. Maybe it has something to do with the historical liberties Mr. Spielberg takes in telling the story. "Vengeance," the George Jonas book upon which the film is largely based, is widely considered to be a fabrication. The book is based on a source named Yuval Aviv, who claimed to be the model for Avner but was, according to Israeli sources, never in the Mossad and had no experience in intelligence beyond working as a screener for El Al, the Israeli airline.
Maybe it has something to do with Mr. Spielberg\'s depiction of the Palestinian targets. The Israeli team\'s first quarry is an elderly, evidently kindly man whom the audience first encounters reading from his Italian translation of Scheherazade. Target Two is a well-spoken diplomat and doting father. Target Three offers Avner a cigarette from across a balcony; Avner repays the gesture by having him blown to bits in his bed. Another target gives a moving speech about his longing for his homeland and the agony of 24 years of dispossession. There is nothing wrong with depicting Palestinians--even those involved in terrorism--as fully rounded human beings. Yet not one of these characters is seen performing the deeds for which they have been targeted, unlike the Israelis in the film, who perform dirty deeds by the dozen. \r\n\r\nMaybe it has something to do with the straw-man arguments the Israelis offer for exacting their revenge. "The only blood that matters to me is Jewish blood," says Steve (Daniel Craig), the most macho of the Israeli hit men. Steve is a South African Jew, blonde and blue-eyed, and somehow it\'s no surprise that this Jewish Aryan is made to utter this most racist of views. Avner\'s mother offers her son an ends-justify-the-means rationalization for his killings: \r\n"Whatever it takes," she says, "we have a place on Earth at last." And then there is Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) who justifies the assassination policy by saying, "forget peace for now, we have to be strong." Never mind that in 1972 neither the Arab states nor the PLO was prepared to live in peace with Israel on any terms. Never mind, too, that peace and strength are not incompatible options. \r\n ",1]
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Maybe it has something to do with Mr. Spielberg's depiction of the Palestinian targets. The Israeli team's first quarry is an elderly, evidently kindly man whom the audience first encounters reading from his Italian translation of Scheherazade. Target Two is a well-spoken diplomat and doting father. Target Three offers Avner a cigarette from across a balcony; Avner repays the gesture by having him blown to bits in his bed. Another target gives a moving speech about his longing for his homeland and the agony of 24 years of dispossession. There is nothing wrong with depicting Palestinians--even those involved in terrorism--as fully rounded human beings. Yet not one of these characters is seen performing the deeds for which they have been targeted, unlike the Israelis in the film, who perform dirty deeds by the dozen.
Maybe it has something to do with the straw-man arguments the Israelis offer for exacting their revenge. "The only blood that matters to me is Jewish blood," says Steve (Daniel Craig), the most macho of the Israeli hit men. Steve is a South African Jew, blonde and blue-eyed, and somehow it's no surprise that this Jewish Aryan is made to utter this most racist of views. Avner's mother offers her son an ends-justify-the-means rationalization for his killings: "Whatever it takes," she says, "we have a place on Earth at last." And then there is Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) who justifies the assassination policy by saying, "forget peace for now, we have to be strong." Never mind that in 1972 neither the Arab states nor the PLO was prepared to live in peace with Israel on any terms. Never mind, too, that peace and strength are not incompatible options.
Maybe it has something to do with the false dichotomy the film establishes between Jewish ideals and Israeli actions. "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values," pronounces the fictional Mrs. Meir. Yet the Torah and Talmud are replete with descriptions of the justified smiting of one enemy or another. (Hanukkah, for instance, commemorates the Maccabean victory over the Seleucid empire.) It is Christianity, not Judaism, that counsels turning the other cheek. \r\n Maybe it has something to do with what in Hollywood is known as the hero\'s "character arc." Avner is introduced in the film as the quintessential \r\nsabra, the son of Zionist pioneers personally selected for the mission by the prime minister herself. But as his doubts about his mission grow, so does his disillusionment with Israel. On a return visit to Israel, he can barely bring himself to shake the hands of two soldiers who congratulate him for his rumored exploits. By film\'s end, he has moved his family to Brooklyn and convinced himself that the Mossad is targeting him for assassination. \r\n Maybe it has something to do with the film\'s final scene. Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), Avner\'s snarling Mossad handler, has come to New York to ask Avner to "come home." Avner refuses; Israel, apparently, is no longer a suitable place for a morally sensitized man. Next, Avner invites Ephraim to join him at home for supper. "Break bread with me," he says. "Isn\'t that what Jews do?" Now it\'s Ephraim who says no, as if to suggest that such old-fashioned courtesies are no longer of interest to today\'s hard-of-heart Israelis. \r\n Maybe it has something to do with Mr. Spielberg\'s decision to depict the actual slaughter of the Israeli athletes (bizarrely interwoven with an especially vulgar sex scene) at the end of the film rather than at the beginning. The effect is to jumble cause and consequence; to make the massacre seem like a response to \r\n",1]
);
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Maybe it has something to do with the false dichotomy the film establishes between Jewish ideals and Israeli actions. "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values," pronounces the fictional Mrs. Meir. Yet the Torah and Talmud are replete with descriptions of the justified smiting of one enemy or another. (Hanukkah, for instance, commemorates the Maccabean victory over the Seleucid empire.) It is Christianity, not Judaism, that counsels turning the other cheek. Maybe it has something to do with what in Hollywood is known as the hero's "character arc." Avner is introduced in the film as the quintessential sabra, the son of Zionist pioneers personally selected for the mission by the prime minister herself. But as his doubts about his mission grow, so does his disillusionment with Israel. On a return visit to Israel, he can barely bring himself to shake the hands of two soldiers who congratulate him for his rumored exploits. By film's end, he has moved his family to Brooklyn and convinced himself that the Mossad is targeting him for assassination. Maybe it has something to do with the film's final scene. Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), Avner's snarling Mossad handler, has come to New York to ask Avner to "come home." Avner refuses; Israel, apparently, is no longer a suitable place for a morally sensitized man. Next, Avner invites Ephraim to join him at home for supper. "Break bread with me," he says. "Isn't that what Jews do?" Now it's Ephraim who says no, as if to suggest that such old-fashioned courtesies are no longer of interest to today's hard-of-heart Israelis. Maybe it has something to do with Mr. Spielberg's decision to depict the actual slaughter of the Israeli athletes (bizarrely interwoven with an especially vulgar sex scene) at the end of the film rather than at the beginning. The effect is to jumble cause and consequence; to make the massacre seem like a response to
Israeli atrocities; to turn Munich into just another stage in the proverbial cycle of violence, or what Mr. Spielberg calls a "response to a response." Mr. Spielberg has said he made this film as a "tribute" to the fallen athletes. What he has mainly accomplished is to trivialize their murder. \r\n "If you start with an ax to grind," Mr. Kushner recently told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, "then you write a bad play or movie." To watch "Munich" is to recognize the truth of that statement. \r\n Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal\'s editorial board. \r\n \r\n\r\n",0]
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Israeli atrocities; to turn Munich into just another stage in the proverbial cycle of violence, or what Mr. Spielberg calls a "response to a response." Mr. Spielberg has said he made this film as a "tribute" to the fallen athletes. What he has mainly accomplished is to trivialize their murder. "If you start with an ax to grind," Mr. Kushner recently told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, "then you write a bad play or movie." To watch "Munich" is to recognize the truth of that statement. Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
