DAN WEBSTER:
Though many movie fans reject the thought, it’s become apparent even to the most ardent Oscar fans that the annual Academy Award handouts are, in the main, a popularity contest.
Yeah, yeah, sometimes actual quality does win out. Citizen Kane, for example—perennially rated as one of the best, if not THE best, motion pictures ever made—was awarded the 1942 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, which went to co-screenwriters Herman J. Mankiewicz and director Orson Welles. Even so, it struck out in the other eight categories for which it was nominated, including Best Picture.
Question: How many of us have actually seen the film that won in that category, John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley?
Much more often, though, movies that attract the most award attention have been the ones that, for a variety of reasons, have outshined more deserving nominees. And the same holds true for this year. Case in point: the virtual ignoring of Tim Fehlbaum’s compelling film September 5.
I say “virtual” because the film is in the running for Best Original Screenplay. But… seriously, just that? Why not editing? Why not Best Supporting Actress (for Leonie Benesch)? Why not Best Picture? Hard to say. But before this degenerates into an Oscar Robbery diatribe, let’s look at the film itself.
As we learned in school (or should have), the study of history rightly or wrongly involves the compilation of dates. And this applies whether we’re talking about years—such as 1066, 1588 and 1776—or specific days—Dec. 7, Sept 11 and most recently Jan. 6.
Less memorable is Sept. 5, of the year 1972. And that’s true even for those of us who are old enough to have witnessed the tragic events that began on that day in Munich, Germany, during that year’s Summer Olympics. Though those events were indeed tragic, it’s not the day but the year we most remember.
And while one of the enduring images of that day was when commentator Jim McKay announced live on air the saga’s sad ending, what most of us never consider is that it was ABC Sports—and not the network’s news department—that delivered the broadcast.
That’s the story director Fehlbaum, working from a script that he co-wrote with Moritz Binder and Alex David, tells in his film. He focuses on three main characters, all of whom were real-life ABC employees: Roone Arledge (played by Peter Sarsgaard) was the president of ABC Sports; Marvin Bader (played by Ben Chaplin) was ABC Sports’ head of operations; and Geoffrey Mason (played by John Magaro) directed the team’s control room.
Several other supporting characters play important roles, but none of them is more important to the story than the one played by Benesch, a German-born actress who portrays Marianne Gebhardt, a woman whose ability to translate in both German and Hebrew proves invaluable to the coverage.
Besides the acting, which is universally superb—particularly by Benesch and Magaro—Fehlbaum imbues his film with the kind of intensity that both captures the strain of a news team struggling to capture a difficult breaking story and makes us forget (or at least ignore) the fact that we already know the outcome.
And struggle the team does, not just to hold onto the right to cover the story despite being “just” a sports crew, but also to get the necessary access and only then to work out all the ethical and moral questions that pop up—such as whether to portray actual killings on live television.
Subplots include both the youthful, untested Mason’s coming of age as a leader and decision-maker, and translator Gebhardt’s having to deal with old-boys'-club sexism while proving to be a key factor in the team’s success.
As someone who has worked for both print and online press for four-plus decades, I’ll admit a bias for films that portray the work of journalists. That said, I’ll state flatly that September 5 enthralled me from its opening scenes to the closing credits. It’s just too bad the Academy didn’t feel the same.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.