I found out two interesting things about this documentary while looking up info for this review – one, that it won a very well deserved Best Documentary Feature Oscar in 1999; and two, that it was directed by Kevin Macdonald, who made Touching the Void. I mention the latter because one of the first things I was going to say about One Day in September was that I was immediately pleased to notice that it’s an old style, “true” documentary – first-hand testimony, no reconstructions, no bias – the very opposite of Touching, which, while I admit is interesting in its own way, is one of the worst offenders in the recent overly-biased, reconstructed documentary revolution. It’s true there are a couple of inserts, clearly created specifically for the movie, of guns firing, a kind of CG illustration part-way showing the specifics of the airport showdown, but nothing quite so … well, phony ... as in Touching and the like.

Originally my main reason for wanting to watch this (and at some point for the same reason I want to watch the 70s drama based on the Munich massacre itself, 21 Hours at Munich) was because Spielberg’s movie really hooked my interest in everything that happened that day. At first I feared I was going to be bored by the whole thing – Macdonald spends a good half hour at the start setting up the context, but it really pays off … this is the stuff I for one want to know. This whole thing was even more complex and morally ambiguous than I thought.

It makes a great companion piece to Munich and in an ideal world it would be included in the same DVD package. While Spielberg at least covers the events of the massacre despite his movie being about its aftermath, he inevitably skimped on the details. For example he, perhaps deliberately (his intention, I think, being to create the effect of a nightmare, a dream state), didn’t indicate the timescale of the whole thing. Between the initial shooting at the airport and the helicopter grenade was two hours and this movie indicates that timescale where Spielberg made it feel like it happened all dizzyingly at once.

The most amazing thing I found with this documentary is that it stirred my emotions pretty much exactly as much as Spielberg’s movie. Or maybe that’s because of Spielberg’s movie … who’s to know? I know that this event has severe moral questions surrounding it, though, and I could dwell on these movies forever just thinking.

One thing that bugs me is how humourous some of the interviewees seem to find the whole thing … like, sure, the part about the terrorists seeing the whole ambush outside on TV is pretty unbelievably comical, these days it’s just hard to believe anyone could be so stupid – but mostly I really don’t get the smirks and giggles in places here. I’m probably just taking death far too seriously, though.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 1:51 am in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.