 |
| Peter Sarsgaard (left) and cast in September 5. (Photo: Paramount.) |
We are pleased to welcome a new critic, Nick Braccia, to Critics at Large.
Like many movie lovers, I have grown so cynical about contemporary releases that when I stumble upon something great, I’m left staggered. That was exactly my reaction after watching September 5, Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum’s docudrama thriller about the Israeli hostage crisis and the murder of eleven athletes and coaches by the Palestinian militant group Black September at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Despite award noms, nobody’s talking about it—certainly not Paramount, which released it – and that’s a terrible shame, because September 5 is a masterfully calibrated newsroom pressure cooker, engineered with the same craftsmanship the ABC Sports team applied on the movie’s titular day, when seasoned pros accustomed to lower stakes were suddenly called to a higher purpose, broadcasting the unfolding catastrophe to 900 million.
The filmmakers, working from a taut script (Fehlbaum, Moritz Binder, Alex David), hurl a maelstrom of quandaries at the ABC crew minute by minute (“Can we show a shooting on live TV?”). These dilemmas unfold through three key perspectives: ABC Sports President Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), Head of Operations Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), and control room lead Geoff Mason (John Magaro).
The actors are remarkable, and their characters are fully rendered, each viewing the crisis through a different, often shifting lens; only by taking their experiences together can we grasp the enormity of their job and the crisis. Arledge is the brain. He carries himself with a surgeon’s confidence: cerebral, chilly, beyond reproach. Anyone who questions him gets a light lashing (“It’s not about politics, it’s about emotions!”). Navigating the building’s tight corridors, he’s in a fugue state of professionalism, neurons firing as he recalibrates based on incoming data. Sarsgaard keeps Arledge from feeling reptilian, mentoring Mason with compassion and fighting NBC’s takeover threat with gusto. But when he gives his fiery locker room pep talk, is he driven by journalistic responsibility or corporate opportunity? He’s too effective to care. Managing the network brass, broadcast quality, and audience perception seamlessly, relentlessly, he’s stretched thin, which is why he’s chosen a deputy like Bader—prickly but more of a people person—to be his operations head.
Bader, who is Jewish, arrives in Munich skeptical about Germany’s motivations; he has no patience for sportswashing World War II. When German Press Chief Hans Klein (Ferdinand Dörfler) declares, “The Games are an opportunity for Germany to move on from the past,” Bader deadpans, “Yeah, sure.” We also see him, proud and moved, watching Israeli weightlifter David Berger (Rony Herman) speak after visiting the camp at Dachau.
As events unfold, Bader emerges as the heart of the team. While his heritage gives him heightened sensitivity, it’s his professional calluses that keep him cool under pressure. Chaplin balances cynicism with compassion, making Bader the steadiest presence in the control room, the one who sees most clearly in the fog of the day’s events.
Mason is the hands of the operation—a young man on the cusp of 30, he’s already set to have the biggest day of his career before terror strikes. Magaro plays him with deference to Arledge’s bullheaded pragmatism and respect for Bader’s wisdom and experience. While he’s initially pulled between their competing values, he dazzles in the control room and grows bolder till he overreaches—caught up in the thrill of victory, he makes a choice that betrays his own morality. The tragedy is that he’s moving so fast, so swept up in the rush, that the fruits of the day’s experience don’t have time to fully take hold. Over the course of the 22-hour broadcast, Mason takes us on an emotional rollercoaster—both thrilling and crushing—as he finds and loses himself in the hot seat.
And what a white-knuckle 22 hours. In 94 minutes, Fehlbaum conveys how the ABC building—adjacent to the Olympic Village where the hostages are held—becomes its own biome, threatening to detach its inhabitants from the realities unfolding just yards away. It’s easy to see how. Dozens of master craftspeople, interfacing with analog and mechanical machines, work at a breakneck pace, making magic with ingenuity and gumption to keep up with—and anticipate—something completely unprecedented.
One of the film’s great wonders is Frank Kruse’s sound design, which captures the seductiveness of this professional flow. The hum of the devices, the whirs of slo-mo machines, the clicks of rotary phones—it all forms a constant sound bed of people at work, pulling us into their rhythms, their lives, their constant. And while we listen, our eyes bounce between copious monitors, following both ABC Sports’ deft maneuvers and the footage they’re capturing. The way their work is presented is so intoxicating that when the day team arrives to reinforce them, it’s a startling moment. The door swings open, and sunlight floods the hallway. I had to squint—I’d been so immersed in the cold steely blues, nondescript beiges, and flashing buttons of the control room (production design by Julian R. Wagner, utilizing period technology) that I’d forgotten it might be daytime outside. This is how September 5 works—it makes us understand how reality can sneak up on a team drawn so deeply into their jobs.
Some of the film’s most striking moments occur when characters, fixed on their work, register a split second of awe at the real-time insanity—often steeped in irony—then press on. In one instance, ABC staffer Gary Slaughter (Daniel Adeosun), disguised as an athlete, is tasked with running film cans and supplies to news anchor Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker) and rookie cameraman Carter Jeffery (Marcus Rutherford). As they watch him jog past the checkpoint on the monitor, his path and gait mimic an Olympian carrying the torch.
Another time, Mason scans Jeffery’s footage and lands on a deeply haunting shot of a masked terrorist leaning over a ledge. Though captured incidentally, the image looks like something out of Feuillade’s Les Vampires. Mason’s as stunned as we are, but he barely hesitates before announcing, “That’s our opener.”
Then there’s a moment so preposterous it has to be real: Jennings throws to Howard Cosell, stationed at the airport where the final, fatal confrontation is unfolding. Lacking the vernacular (and news experience) to match the moment, Cosell, as if calling an Ali fight, declares, “We’re building up to what I think will be quite the climax.”
While the three leads drive the movie, the rich ensemble adds vital perspectives. Marianna Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), a German national and translator working with ABC Sports, has the clearest grasp of what these Olympics mean for Germany, why its security forces are so ill-prepared, and what the day’s cost will be for everyone. Watching the larger team, we see how professionalism can cut both ways—but through the context she provides, and the deep sadness surrounding it, we understand that Germany’s incompetent handling of the crisis is the greater crime.
Another standout is Walker’s Jennings, who brings swagger and experience to the team. The famous reporter is the ringer who keeps the ABC Sports crew in the game—though he never lets them forget that, in the news business, they’re amateurs. Still, he’s so poised he’s practically deadpan. When he speaks over the radio, the control room—and the audience—are rapt with attention.
None of this would feel so immersive without the film’s meticulous period detail and the uncanny realism of its broadcast footage. Fehlbaum and editor Hansjörg Weißbrich expertly weave archival footage into the film but have been cagey in interviews about what’s real and what’s recreated (aside from the obviously authentic footage of anchor Jim McKay). The movie opens with an in-world ABC Sports sizzle reel that blends both, and I couldn’t tell the difference. Regardless, it’s a witty piece of in-world exposition, zippily explaining the shared satellite technology that allows this broadcast to be simulcast around the world. Despite its pep, the sequence ends with ominous foreshadowing: a starter pistol fires, signaling not just ABC’s race to cover the crisis but the inescapable violence ahead.
September 5 has a crushing ending. Feeling his oats and riding high on his performance, Mason gets overeager and announces the hostages’ freedom before it’s carefully confirmed. He follows Arledge’s fast, win-at-all-costs example and ignores Bader’s call for caution. In doing so, he makes an error of both professional and moral judgment. It defeats him on both levels, but what hits even harder is the moment he stands shell-shocked, hearing Arledge and Jennings already strategizing September 6’s programming. Just another day at the office.
One might be quick to categorize September 5 as a Sorkin clone, but that’s not really accurate. Sorkin’s style—heightened dialogue, frantic pacing—has been endlessly imitated, but in weaker knockoffs (some even from Sorkin himself) the whirlwind takes over, reducing characters to vessels for the rush. This doesn’t happen in September 5. Even when the characters get swept up in the tumult and lose sight of themselves, Fehlbaum keeps them, and us, firmly anchored.
The filmmakers, working from a taut script (Fehlbaum, Moritz Binder, Alex David), hurl a maelstrom of quandaries at the ABC crew minute by minute (“Can we show a shooting on live TV?”). These dilemmas unfold through three key perspectives: ABC Sports President Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), Head of Operations Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), and control room lead Geoff Mason (John Magaro).
The actors are remarkable, and their characters are fully rendered, each viewing the crisis through a different, often shifting lens; only by taking their experiences together can we grasp the enormity of their job and the crisis. Arledge is the brain. He carries himself with a surgeon’s confidence: cerebral, chilly, beyond reproach. Anyone who questions him gets a light lashing (“It’s not about politics, it’s about emotions!”). Navigating the building’s tight corridors, he’s in a fugue state of professionalism, neurons firing as he recalibrates based on incoming data. Sarsgaard keeps Arledge from feeling reptilian, mentoring Mason with compassion and fighting NBC’s takeover threat with gusto. But when he gives his fiery locker room pep talk, is he driven by journalistic responsibility or corporate opportunity? He’s too effective to care. Managing the network brass, broadcast quality, and audience perception seamlessly, relentlessly, he’s stretched thin, which is why he’s chosen a deputy like Bader—prickly but more of a people person—to be his operations head.
Bader, who is Jewish, arrives in Munich skeptical about Germany’s motivations; he has no patience for sportswashing World War II. When German Press Chief Hans Klein (Ferdinand Dörfler) declares, “The Games are an opportunity for Germany to move on from the past,” Bader deadpans, “Yeah, sure.” We also see him, proud and moved, watching Israeli weightlifter David Berger (Rony Herman) speak after visiting the camp at Dachau.
As events unfold, Bader emerges as the heart of the team. While his heritage gives him heightened sensitivity, it’s his professional calluses that keep him cool under pressure. Chaplin balances cynicism with compassion, making Bader the steadiest presence in the control room, the one who sees most clearly in the fog of the day’s events.
 |
| John Margaro as Geoff Mason. (Photo: Paramount.) |
Mason is the hands of the operation—a young man on the cusp of 30, he’s already set to have the biggest day of his career before terror strikes. Magaro plays him with deference to Arledge’s bullheaded pragmatism and respect for Bader’s wisdom and experience. While he’s initially pulled between their competing values, he dazzles in the control room and grows bolder till he overreaches—caught up in the thrill of victory, he makes a choice that betrays his own morality. The tragedy is that he’s moving so fast, so swept up in the rush, that the fruits of the day’s experience don’t have time to fully take hold. Over the course of the 22-hour broadcast, Mason takes us on an emotional rollercoaster—both thrilling and crushing—as he finds and loses himself in the hot seat.
And what a white-knuckle 22 hours. In 94 minutes, Fehlbaum conveys how the ABC building—adjacent to the Olympic Village where the hostages are held—becomes its own biome, threatening to detach its inhabitants from the realities unfolding just yards away. It’s easy to see how. Dozens of master craftspeople, interfacing with analog and mechanical machines, work at a breakneck pace, making magic with ingenuity and gumption to keep up with—and anticipate—something completely unprecedented.
One of the film’s great wonders is Frank Kruse’s sound design, which captures the seductiveness of this professional flow. The hum of the devices, the whirs of slo-mo machines, the clicks of rotary phones—it all forms a constant sound bed of people at work, pulling us into their rhythms, their lives, their constant. And while we listen, our eyes bounce between copious monitors, following both ABC Sports’ deft maneuvers and the footage they’re capturing. The way their work is presented is so intoxicating that when the day team arrives to reinforce them, it’s a startling moment. The door swings open, and sunlight floods the hallway. I had to squint—I’d been so immersed in the cold steely blues, nondescript beiges, and flashing buttons of the control room (production design by Julian R. Wagner, utilizing period technology) that I’d forgotten it might be daytime outside. This is how September 5 works—it makes us understand how reality can sneak up on a team drawn so deeply into their jobs.
Some of the film’s most striking moments occur when characters, fixed on their work, register a split second of awe at the real-time insanity—often steeped in irony—then press on. In one instance, ABC staffer Gary Slaughter (Daniel Adeosun), disguised as an athlete, is tasked with running film cans and supplies to news anchor Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker) and rookie cameraman Carter Jeffery (Marcus Rutherford). As they watch him jog past the checkpoint on the monitor, his path and gait mimic an Olympian carrying the torch.
Another time, Mason scans Jeffery’s footage and lands on a deeply haunting shot of a masked terrorist leaning over a ledge. Though captured incidentally, the image looks like something out of Feuillade’s Les Vampires. Mason’s as stunned as we are, but he barely hesitates before announcing, “That’s our opener.”
Then there’s a moment so preposterous it has to be real: Jennings throws to Howard Cosell, stationed at the airport where the final, fatal confrontation is unfolding. Lacking the vernacular (and news experience) to match the moment, Cosell, as if calling an Ali fight, declares, “We’re building up to what I think will be quite the climax.”
While the three leads drive the movie, the rich ensemble adds vital perspectives. Marianna Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), a German national and translator working with ABC Sports, has the clearest grasp of what these Olympics mean for Germany, why its security forces are so ill-prepared, and what the day’s cost will be for everyone. Watching the larger team, we see how professionalism can cut both ways—but through the context she provides, and the deep sadness surrounding it, we understand that Germany’s incompetent handling of the crisis is the greater crime.
Another standout is Walker’s Jennings, who brings swagger and experience to the team. The famous reporter is the ringer who keeps the ABC Sports crew in the game—though he never lets them forget that, in the news business, they’re amateurs. Still, he’s so poised he’s practically deadpan. When he speaks over the radio, the control room—and the audience—are rapt with attention.
None of this would feel so immersive without the film’s meticulous period detail and the uncanny realism of its broadcast footage. Fehlbaum and editor Hansjörg Weißbrich expertly weave archival footage into the film but have been cagey in interviews about what’s real and what’s recreated (aside from the obviously authentic footage of anchor Jim McKay). The movie opens with an in-world ABC Sports sizzle reel that blends both, and I couldn’t tell the difference. Regardless, it’s a witty piece of in-world exposition, zippily explaining the shared satellite technology that allows this broadcast to be simulcast around the world. Despite its pep, the sequence ends with ominous foreshadowing: a starter pistol fires, signaling not just ABC’s race to cover the crisis but the inescapable violence ahead.
September 5 has a crushing ending. Feeling his oats and riding high on his performance, Mason gets overeager and announces the hostages’ freedom before it’s carefully confirmed. He follows Arledge’s fast, win-at-all-costs example and ignores Bader’s call for caution. In doing so, he makes an error of both professional and moral judgment. It defeats him on both levels, but what hits even harder is the moment he stands shell-shocked, hearing Arledge and Jennings already strategizing September 6’s programming. Just another day at the office.
One might be quick to categorize September 5 as a Sorkin clone, but that’s not really accurate. Sorkin’s style—heightened dialogue, frantic pacing—has been endlessly imitated, but in weaker knockoffs (some even from Sorkin himself) the whirlwind takes over, reducing characters to vessels for the rush. This doesn’t happen in September 5. Even when the characters get swept up in the tumult and lose sight of themselves, Fehlbaum keeps them, and us, firmly anchored.
– Nick Braccia s a Clio and Cannes Lion-winning producer, writer, and director. An Adjunct Associate Professor in Columbia University’s Film Department, he has also taught at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy. He co-created and executive produced the horror franchise Video Palace for AMC's Shudder and has co-written immersive experiences for The Man in the High Castle, Westworld, and The Purge. Braccia is the author of Off the Back of a Truck: Contraband for the Sopranos Fan (Simon & Schuster, 2020) and a member of the Producers Guild of America.
No comments:
Post a Comment