“September 5” Review

The newsroom drama of September 5 works so well for focusing more on the nuts and bolts getting mixed with the real-world tragedy covered. It’s perhaps the most intriguing angle to pursue, considering the heated nature of the 1972 Munich Olympic hostage crisis. Rarely does the film veer out of its control room and studio, keeping the audience locked into covering the events and making the tough calls of where to place the camera and what news to report. The hostage crisis is already tense, but the race to process film and post-interviews is just as exciting.

The story is made all the more compelling by the news team covering this historical event ABC Sports. Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) ensures that his coverage won’t be mindless as he directs his crew in Munich. The era’s politics were heated, and he didn’t shy away from them. After all, how could you not ask Mark Spitz, a Jewish American, how it felt to win a Gold Medal in Hitler’s backyard? This was the first live broadcast of this huge sports event, and Arledge made it worthy of TV viewers beyond checking scores and witnessing victories.

Taking on the B team at 4 am is the wet-behind-the-ears Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro). He was hoping for a routine day of covering the less prominent sports. What he ends up covering is a brutal situation of Israeli athletes being taken hostage by the terrorist group Black Saturday. It starts with hearing gunshots. The confirmation of gunfire soon sends the newsroom scrambling to get coverage. Camera are wheeled out to get a glimpse of the hostages. Phones are rewired to have the audio broadcasted. Through it all, there’s always that question of whether or not bounds are being broken. ABC and the German government seems to think so. Roone, however, approves of Geoffrey helming the riskiest broadcast in television history.

Director Tim Fehlbaum places a lot of detail into the mechanics of 1970s journalism. Satellites allowed for live feeds but they weren’t reliable and would often drop amid important interviews. Film would have to be developed on-site to meet deadlines and get crucial information to air. Logos would have to be positioned on the screen for news branding and the filming of that is shown as well. Watching all of these components in action is more intense than the obligatory scenes of people running down hallways, which the film does boast.

That said, there are reasons to scramble. We get a sense of how scrappy this type of broadcast became. Mistakes are made when the crew doesn’t realize the TVs in the housing for the athletes pick up the same ABC broadcast. It’s one of many ethical concerns that come up with this story, where it’d be so easy for old wounds and bigotry to fester with lives on the line. This becomes more prominent with Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), the German translator who keeps communication open but isn’t afraid to offer her own perspective. She speaks openly about how the German people also want to put their hideous history behind them, even when it seems to be bubbling up again.

There may be some frustration that a film like this never directly condemns or celebrates the ethics of journalism on that fateful day. The tough questions are never given firm answers, but they’re not ignored either. One such question posed is, “If [Black September] shoot someone on live television, is it our story or is it theirs?” But when the broadcast is concluded and history is made, there isn’t a deep sense of invigoration for a job well done. There’s sorrow for the grim end and a fear of what this event will mean going forward. The people behind the camera did their jobs well and made TV history. They’re also humans, reacting understandably to all the Israeli athletes being slaughtered and the international political tensions increased.

The importance of September 5 is approached with grounded journalism and ethical maturity, never reducing the event to something as procedural as developing film. Keeping the film locked within the control room creates a palpable tension and a lingering sensation of the importance required to make sure this broadcast proceeds. For being the first live televised terrorist attack, the world was forever changed on a political, technical, and media-consumption level. The approach to making this event more of a Pandora’s box makes it easier to appreciate the tactile nature and firm stance on journalism being more than asking athletes dry questions. Crucial events like these are only as important as those who document them, stressing the importance of journalism during times when we need it most.