posted
I don't mean any offense here, but I noticed something in OSC's essay this week that I thought I might mention.
quote:Nor is it courageous to make a movie showing that even when terrorists murder Israeli athletes at the Olympics, it's the terrorists who are the tragic victims and the Israelis who are the murderers as they exact retribution from the killers. This is simply the western intellectual party line, in which all terrorist acts by Muslims are justified as long as they're killing Jews.
I'm trying to understand how anyone who saw that movie could think that. This movie spent a great deal of its time, scattered from beginning to end so that we wouldn't forget, making it perfectly clear that Mr Spielberg did view the Jews as the tragic victims in this story. Based upon the story of the Munich Olympics, the terrorists were absolutely in the wrong, and the Jews had every right to seek justice.
What made this movie so powerful and profound, from my point of view, wasn't re-defining the moral standing of the parties in this tragic story, nor debating the right for Israel to seek justice. It was the idea that the quest for vengance, even when it's unambiguously ethically justified, can lead to consequences that are more destructive on a personal and global scale than whatever wrong was originally endeavoured to be set right.
I saw this movie as nothing more or less than a graphic and persuasive example of Gandhi's famous line, "an eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind." It made clear a philosophy held (at least in theory) by peace-loving Christians, Jews and Moslems, and I'm surprised that Mr. Card didn't see that in the movie. For me, this was a far more powerfully religious experience than The Chronicles of Narnia (the film version, at least) even aspired to be.
As someone who wholeheartedly supported the American campaign in Afghanistan, and even (though with some less conviction) our invasion of Iraq, this movie really made me re-think some of my positions. I didn't completely do a 180 on them, but it did give me some serious food for thought, which is something Spielberg hasn't done for a good long time. If that's not the mark of great art, I'd like to hear a better one.
Posts: 563 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Here are two topics on the other side that you might be interested in.
[edit]Not that that means you can't start the same topic over here if you want to discuss it with a broader audience. The links are in case you want to respond to what's already been said in those threads. I haven't seen the movie, so I have no comment on it or the column.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I have not seen Munich, but I will share a comment from a friend who did. His main criticism of the movie was "It had even more endings that Return of the King."
posted
The "eye for an eye" philosophy is not meant to be taken literally in Judaism. It refers to monetary compensation - the price of an eye for the loss of an eye. Rambam further explains that one who injures another person is required to compensate him and the award takes into account 5 factors: damage, pain, medical treatment, loss of employment, and embarrassment.
Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
I don't think that statment from Gandhi was literal either, to me it meant that sometimes the cost of retrabution/revenge is worse that the original injury, at least when taken to extremes.
It is one of my favorite quotes, BTW. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:The "eye for an eye" philosophy is not meant to be taken literally in Judaism.
I've got to admit that this is one of the hardest "it's meant to be a metaphor" things for me to wrap my brain around, Mrs. M. Because I just can't quite see the POINT in the phrase "an eye for an eye" if it really means "an eye's worth of chickens for an eye."
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:The "eye for an eye" philosophy is not meant to be taken literally in Judaism. It refers to monetary compensation - the price of an eye for the loss of an eye. Rambam further explains that one who injures another person is required to compensate him and the award takes into account 5 factors: damage, pain, medical treatment, loss of employment, and embarrassment.
Everytime I read something like this, I wonder what else have we been bungling for generations.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Tom, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why it was phrased that way, but, frankly, I'm way too tired to attempt to articulate it. It took me a couple of minutes to remember how to spell articulate. Maybe rivka or Tante Shvester could jump in?
Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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