Producers: Philipp Trauer, Thomas Wöbke, Sean Penn, John Ira Palmer, John Wildermuth, Costanze Guttmann, Rüdiger Böss and Egard Reitz Filmproduktion  Director: Tim Fehlbaum  Screenplay: Tim Fehlbaum and Moritz Binder   Cast: Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch, Zinedine Soualem, Georgina Rich, Corey Johnson, Benjamin Walker, Daniel Adeosun, Rony Herman and Jeff Book   Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Grade: B+

The Munich Massacre, the deaths of eleven members of the 1972 Israeli Olympic team and the five of the eight Palestinian terrorists who had taken them hostage, has been the subject of various documentaries and been dramatized several times, and Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” dealt with Mossad’s targeting of the militants who escaped, as well as of those who planned the operation.  “September 5” treats the tragic events of that day indirectly, from the viewpoint of the ABC sports team on site to cover the games for television, who were thrust into a different role—reporting the hostage story live to a horrified world and thereby making broadcast history themselves.

The day begins normally, with sports division president Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) and operations manager Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) going off to rest, leaving newly-arrived Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) in charge of the console in the producer’s chair.  The sound of gunfire in the distance changes things; with their view of Building 31 of the Olympic Village, where the Israeli team was housed, the ABC broadcasters’ initial confusion gives rise to a sense of journalistic urgency as what’s unfolding becomes apparent.  Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker, whose role consists largely of a voice over the telephone) takes a strategic position with a view of the Israeli team’s rooms, and Arledge and Bader will be called back to the broadcast booth while Jim McKay (appearing through archival footage smoothly integrated into the action by editor Hansjörg Weissbrich) begins his daylong stint as anchor of the coverage.        

Thus the atmosphere of business as usual is transformed into a pressure-cooker environment—well caught by Weissbrich, director Tim Fehlbaum and cinematographer Markus Förderer—in which the team, prepared for an ordinary round of sports, must instead turn their focus to an unfolding catastrophe and confront the ethical quandaries that are necessarily implicit in such a task, as well as the practical difficulties that beset them as a result of what now seems like antediluvian early seventies technology. 

Should a lesser loaded term than terrorists we found to refer to the members of Black September who are holding the hostages?  How critical should the coverage be of the obviously inept German response, especially since the country’s Nazi past hangs over the Olympics, which are designed to convey the image of a changed nation?   Is it offensive to utilize tape of interviews done with David Berger (Rony Herman), an American on the Israeli wrestling team who’s now a hostage, or to interview his father (Jeff Book) while his son’s life is hanging in the balance?  Or to cite an even more crucial case, to which extent should one, in relaying information about live events, rely on reports that seem to possess the certainty of official pronouncements but cannot be independently verified?  That becomes a major question in the final stage of the coverage, and Mason’s decision has awful consequences.

On the practical side, the cumbersome equipment of the time is a constant issue, but so are questions of control.  Should the operation be turned over to the News division?  (Arledge, later President of ABC News, refuses, no doubt at least partially to prove his mettle in the larger organization.)  At a critical juncture ABC’s use of the sole satellite carrying coverage from Munich is to be transferred by prior agreement to CBS?  (A compromise is quickly arranged.)

“September 5” generally sticks to the historical record, though the screenplay by Fehlbaum and Moritz Binder does take dramatic license.  But some of the plot points that might seem fictionalized—like dressing up staffer Gary Slaughter (Daniel Adeosun) in the guise of an Olympic athlete to allow him to act as a courier of film canisters to and from the Village, which has been closed off to newsmen—in fact actually happened, while others that feel grounded in reality aren’t: team translator Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), who often plays a pivotal role in the action, is in fact a composite figure, an invention of the writers designed to illustrate how citizens of the “new Germany” (West Germany, actually), reacted to what was happening.  Of course, the film is not a documentary, and such sleights of hand are to be expected; they don’t vitiate its overall power.

None of the cast members—not even Sarsgaard, who has top billing—dominates in what’s an ensemble effort, but the standouts are Benesch, whose professionalism in the face of what such a person would have seen as a national disaster; Chapin, who as Bader, the son of Holocaust survivors, had personal demons to confront but still did his job; and especially Magaro, as the new kid on the block desperate to prove his competence but wracked by insecurity.  But all find their places in the claustrophobic set fashioned by production designer Julian R. Wagner.  The costumes of Leonie Zykan convey the period without overemphasis, while Lorenz Dangel’s score adds to the tension without overshadowing the visuals.

The perspective “September 5” offers on the Munich Massacre is limited, but within its parameters the film delivers an excitingly propulsive account of a watershed moment in modern news coverage, as well as a potent reminder of the first such tragedy broadcast to viewers as it was actually occurring.

Producer: Georgina Lowe   Director: Mike Leigh    Screenplay: Mike Leigh   Cast: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, David Webber, Tuwaine Barrett, Ani Nelson, Sophia Brown, Jonathan Livingstone, Gary Beadle, Hiral Varsani, Samantha Spiro, Ruby Bentall, Diveen Henry, Bryony Miller, Ashna Rabheru, Jo Martin, Llewella Gideon, Naana Agyei Ampadu, Donna Banya, Syrus Lowe, Elliot Edusah and Tiwa Lade     Distributor: Bleecker Street

Grade: B+

Anger is a constant in the life of Pansy Deacon (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), the perpetually furious, utterly belligerent housewife who’s the protagonist of Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths.”  Brilliantly embodied by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, she’s a person you would never want to meet—except on screen, the polar opposite to the unfailingly optimistic, good-natured Poppy whom Sally Hawkins played in Leigh’s delightful 2008 “Happy-Go-Lucky.”

Pansy picks fights with virtually everyone she encounters, be it a driver (Gary Beadle) she tussles with over a parking spot (he has the temerity to inquire whether she’s about to leave it—a question that escalates into a vitriolic shouting match), a clerk (Alice Bailey Johnson) who unwisely offers to help her pick out a couch in a department store as well as a couple (Elliot Edusah and Tiwa Lade) she berates for being too cuddly on a floor model, a doctor (Ruby Bentall) or dentist (Hiral Varsani) she assumes to be incompetent or insufficiently solicitous, and even a couple of customers (Diveen Henry and Bryony Miller) waiting in the check-out line behind her at a store.  (The cashier, played by Ashna Rabheru, simply smiles vacantly at the brouhaha, perhaps accustomed to such verbal skirmishes.)

If outsiders are often targets of her rage, however, her family feels the brunt of it.  Her husband Curtley (David Webber), a self-employed plumber, bears up stoically under her harangues, which include complaints about his employment of Virgil (Jonathan Livingstone), a competent, reliable fellow, as his assistant rather than their son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett).  And yet she’s equally hard on Moses, a burly, gentle twenty-two year old who spends most of his day in his bedroom playing video games, except when he goes out for long, rambling walks, on which he might meet a pleasant girl (Donna Banya) but is more likely to be accosted by bullying boys.  Both husband and son have been beaten down by Pansy’s shrill, relentless badgering and her incessant barbs about the state of the world.

Her fury is also directed against her younger sister Chantelle (Michele Austin), a stylist in a hair salon who’s as congenitally upbeat as Pansy is ill-tempered.  Even when Chantelle is doing her hair, no doubt gratis, Pansy can’t resist being abrasive.  But Chantelle maintains her sunny disposition, and her home life is far from the bleakness of her sister’s.  She’s a single mother to two grown daughters, Kayla (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown), who have good positions, the former as a marketing executive and the latter as a legal intern.  Both seem eminently well-adjusted and happy, despite Kayla’s boss (Samantha Spiro) being rather a harpy (Syrus Lowe, as Kayla’s colleague, rolls his eyes at her nasty put-downs) and Aleisha’s (Naana Agyei Ampadu) being no less demanding, though in a nicer way.

What’s the cause of Pansy’s rage, which, in Jean-Baptiste’s ferocious performance (the result, like the entire film, of the intensive collaborative improvisation and rehearsal between Leigh and his cast that has been the writer-director’s creative modus operandi for decades), is at once scathingly hilarious, terrifying and profoundly sad?

On the surface it’s inexplicable: she’s living what seems a relatively comfortable middle-class life in a modest suburban house, which she keeps scrupulously clean, to the extent that it seems sterile (here, as elsewhere, Suzie Davies’ production design is impeccable, and Dick Pope’s cinematography crisply realistic): when she finds a banana peel Moses has left on a counter, she erupts, just as she does when a fox scampers into her back yard.  (Chantelle’s apartment, by contrast, is alive with plants.)  There are hints of an unhappy childhood with a mother who demanded much of her as the oldest child, and she’s constantly complaining of being unwell, taking to her bed and awakening with a horrified gasp from what would seem to be frightening, unspecified dreams.

But the film offers no simple explanation: Pansy is simply who she is, deeply depressed, always complaining about being tired and lonely, always ready to take out her seething vitriol on anyone and everyone.  When Chantelle persuades her to visit their mother’s grave on the fifth anniversary of her death, after Pansy has repeatedly begged off committing to the trip on grounds of her supposed maladies, it’s a frosty event, filled with tension.  Chantelle asks, “Why can’t you enjoy life?” to which she simply responds, “I don’t know,” adding, “It’s not fair.”  When they repair to Chantelle’s place for a family meal, she refuses to eat; and when Moses gives her a bouquet for Mother’s Day, her reaction is more of horror than acceptance, and she withdraws into her private hell, which a domestic setback will deepen.  Viewers expecting a last-act catharsis will instead be faced with imagining what might follow, reaching their own conclusions.  Leigh isn’t about to tie everything up neatly and resolve the mysteries of human behavior he and his cast have fashioned.

Jean-Baptiste is the roaring center of “Hard Truths,” and she’s so overwhelming that it might be hard to properly appreciate the sterling performances by the cast of the cast.  But they’re all exceptionally fine, especially Austin, who comforts her sister as best she can, an example of unconditional love if ever one existed.  Tanie Reddin’s precise editing and Gary Yershon’s score, modulating between melancholy tones and brief turns to possible brightness, add to the technical polish.

Leigh, returning to the smaller scale of his early films, including “Secrets & Lies” (1996), his first collaboration with Jean-Baptiste, following forays into larger-scale works like “Mr. Turner” and “Peterloo,” proves that as he enters his eighth decade he’s lost none of his touch in creating piercing portraits of characters whose complexity is both compelling and somehow baffling.  If “Hard Truths” turns out to be his final film, it is one that again reaffirms the wisdom behind his idiosyncratic mode of filmmaking. It’s an extraordinarily vivid and provocative study of a woman constantly on the edge.