MUNICH
Last night, I watched the movie Munich with my siblings. I came out of the theatre deeply disturbed, touched and so full of questions.
Munich is a movie that narrates the series of events in 1972 following the murders of the entire Israeli contingent of the Munich Olympics by erring Palestinians. A young patriot, Avner is called in by the Israeli Government to be the leader of a group of men tasked to assasinate 11 Palestinians hiding in Europe who were considered to have had very important roles in the killing of Israelis. He succeeds killing 7 of them and loses 3 of his own men in the process. He leaves Israel with his family and moves to Brooklyn, a changed man. He is haunted by the Munich incident and how being an assasin has toyed with his morality and sanity. In the end, the movie ends in a park in Brooklyn overlooking the Hudson River, with a clear view of the United Nations facility in the background. How symbolic.
The complexity of my emotions bothers me. The movie was not meant to be an escapist movie. It was also not a mere historical account as well. It was real. 1972 and 2006 are not so different after all. There has yet to be a resolution with the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Palestines are still in search for that land and country to call their own.
Political Science taught us all that a nation consists of the people and territory. But beyond all this I realized last night that a nation has to have a common ideology, values, beliefs and a deep sense of pride in who they are. In the movie, it was portrayed that the Palestinians were such people with such values, but without a place they could come "home" to.
Home, as I like to tell people, is where the heart is. The world expands more and more, there are thousands migrants and OCWs in our midst today. Do we lose a home when we leave our roots and gain another one at our destination? Or are our roots and destinations one and the same?
I stand corrected. Home, is not simply where the heart is, but where the soul's telos (orientation) is. Our souls begins and ends with God. Therefore in this world, we are merely tenants and landlords, for all this is temporary. How sad and ironic that in the Bible, the Israelites were God's chosen people, whom he led out of slavery into the Promised Land.
Nonetheless, I believe this is all part of a plan.
God's plan, and His alone.
Munich is a movie that narrates the series of events in 1972 following the murders of the entire Israeli contingent of the Munich Olympics by erring Palestinians. A young patriot, Avner is called in by the Israeli Government to be the leader of a group of men tasked to assasinate 11 Palestinians hiding in Europe who were considered to have had very important roles in the killing of Israelis. He succeeds killing 7 of them and loses 3 of his own men in the process. He leaves Israel with his family and moves to Brooklyn, a changed man. He is haunted by the Munich incident and how being an assasin has toyed with his morality and sanity. In the end, the movie ends in a park in Brooklyn overlooking the Hudson River, with a clear view of the United Nations facility in the background. How symbolic.
The complexity of my emotions bothers me. The movie was not meant to be an escapist movie. It was also not a mere historical account as well. It was real. 1972 and 2006 are not so different after all. There has yet to be a resolution with the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Palestines are still in search for that land and country to call their own.
Political Science taught us all that a nation consists of the people and territory. But beyond all this I realized last night that a nation has to have a common ideology, values, beliefs and a deep sense of pride in who they are. In the movie, it was portrayed that the Palestinians were such people with such values, but without a place they could come "home" to.
Home, as I like to tell people, is where the heart is. The world expands more and more, there are thousands migrants and OCWs in our midst today. Do we lose a home when we leave our roots and gain another one at our destination? Or are our roots and destinations one and the same?
I stand corrected. Home, is not simply where the heart is, but where the soul's telos (orientation) is. Our souls begins and ends with God. Therefore in this world, we are merely tenants and landlords, for all this is temporary. How sad and ironic that in the Bible, the Israelites were God's chosen people, whom he led out of slavery into the Promised Land.
Nonetheless, I believe this is all part of a plan.
God's plan, and His alone.
posted by kath | 10:40 AM
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