Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX
“One Day in September” (1999) won the 2000 Academy Award for the Best Documentary; brilliantly brutal scenario of the horrific slaughter of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. More than the massacre of innocents it dismantled the intrinsic, iconic goal of the Olympics…peace and harmony between ideologies, cultures; cancelling differences, uniting in spirt, sharing the competitions between mutual skills; remarkability of excellence.
Director/writer Tim Fehlbaum inspired by referenced documentary succeeded in not focusing on the political; his goal was capturing and highlighting an idiosyncratic moment in television history, where boundaries were erased, obliterated in seconds; comrades in sportscasting expertise pole-vaulted to the core of a tragedy of mammoth proportions, ABC’s commentators, versed on the genius of sportsmanlike victories transitioned into forecasters of doom and destruction: Jim McKay, Peter Jennings testifying instead of Olympic conquests, the intricacies of death and annihilation. Courageous, behind the scenes, individuals: producer Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), Goeffrey Mason (John Magaro), Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch) we never see or imagine, shine in this intensely terrifying moment, a world totally naïve of the consequences; massive ineptitudes of an unprepared Germany; huge miscalculations, misunderstandings, immense lack of coordination on all fronts. A global tragedy unfolding in real time; changing the face of newscasting perpetually.
Despite knowing the outcome viewers witness an edge-of-your-seat, thrilling, catastrophic spectacle; archival footage of winners, interspersed with shocking reality as Golda Meir refuses to negotiate with the terrorists; it was the worst of times, that the passage of time has yet to heal.
FOUR STARS!!!!
Peneflix
