September 5 is a deliberately old-fashioned movie. Hollywood has a history of lionizing journalism. Cary Grant was at his most suave in His Girl Friday, Jane Fonda heroic in The China Syndrome, and even a straightforward romantic comedy like Roman Holiday aimed to show the merits of the press. In recent years, historical dramas such as The Post and Spotlight have gone a step further, as they argue journalists are under fire from forces that’ve attempted to suppress the truth.
It’s easy to see how September 5 was pitched in this style; it’s a very procedural, matter-of-fact account of one of the most significant news events of the 20th century. However, the 94-minute historical thriller has become the subject of controversy due to the specific events covered. Set amidst the 1972 Olympic Games, the film chronicles the efforts taken by the ABC sports news team to cover the “Black September” tragedy. Two members of the Israeli Olympic team were killed by a Palestinian terrorist group, and an additional nine athletes perished during a failed rescue mission. While director Tim Fehlbaum has claimed that the film is not “a political statement,” those sentiments are not shared by the vast majority of early reviews for September 5.
September 5 is the first major Hollywood film to explore this event since Steven Spielberg’s Munich was released to critical acclaim in 2005, but the industry has changed significantly in the past two decades. Films like September 5 are analyzed by film pundits and historians, many of whom find it necessary to call out what the film didn’t mention. The phrase “based on a true story” is seldom taken seriously; controversy emerges when biopics take dramatic license with recorded history for the sake of making a more compelling narrative. The current violence in Gaza has put an even greater constraint on September 5, as it is bound to be criticized for the parallels it does (or doesn’t) draw to 2024.
The most ironic aspect is that September 5 is about the fundamental challenge of presenting objective coverage of any incident that involves such incendiary political responses. It’s made clear early on in September 5 that the journalists Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), and Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) are sports reporters who stumbled into covering the first act of terrorism broadcast to a global audience. The ABC Sports team had been assigned to cover the games, and only ended up reporting on the crisis because of their proximity to Olympic Village. It’d make little sense to shift coverage to a stateside team that weren’t reporting live from Munich, even if a more seasoned news team may have had more experience tackling acts of political violence.
September 5 is aimed at sparking questions about what exactly happened in 1972, but is largely divorced from the specifics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What divides Mason and Arledge is the point in which the story’s importance outweighs its accuracy. Arledge notes that spreading misinformation about an ongoing hostage crisis could lead to inaccurate assumptions being drawn by a largely uninformed public, but Mason believes that any delay in breaking news will inevitably lead to more chaos. The more interesting theme emerges in the final act, in which the ABC team realize that their coverage was viewed in some capacity by the perpetrators of the crime. Despite their best efforts to present their coverage objectively, these journalists became implicated in the story simply by reporting the facts.
September 5 goes out of its way to prove that it’s exclusively a story about journalism. The film’s entirely set within the broadcasting facility used during the broadcast, and only shifts to exterior locations when one of the anchors does sideline reporting. Archive footage is used, but it’s inserted to show what knowledge the ABC sports team had at the time. The film manages to avoid the type of inspirational monologue about the integrity of the fourth estate; September 5 ends with Mason, Arledge, and the rest of the team sitting in stunned silence as they try to understand what they just witnessed.
September 5 can’t avoid the fact that people will make assumptions about those reporting the news based on what they see on television. Prior to the hostage crisis, several members of the ABC team note that holding a global celebration of world peace in Munich is bound to generate blowback. Given how unprecedented the Black September coverage was, the specific reference to the militant group as “terrorists” was a groundbreaking work of framing. Nonetheless, there’s no suggestion of what personal positions Arledge, Mason, or Bader held. If they did favor a side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it isn’t implicitly revealed in September 5.
If viewers are able to view September 5 purely as a procedural thriller, there’s a lot to like. The screenplay is sharply written, the pacing is electrifying, and the performances are surprisingly authentic, with Sarsgaard the standout. However, this would require critics, pundits, and casual viewers alike to approach the material with a degree of nuance. Like September 5, the notion of an intellectually-engaged audience is very old-fashioned.
