September 5: Film Review
I love a film that spotlights the hard work of journalists and September 5 is the perfect example of that.
The film is set on 5 September 1972 at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. The ABC Sports broadcasting team from America are on the ground, with a production base near the Olympic Village, to cover the sporting event live for the first time using a satellite. When Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) clocks on for his shift, he simply expects to cover the sporting schedule for the day. However, this is soon disrupted by reports of gunshots and a hostage situation in the Israeli team’s apartment.
What follows is an almost real-time retelling of how the ABC Sports team, presided over by Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), responded to the hostage crisis as it unfolded; confirming reports, finding eyewitnesses, gathering footage to present to viewers and most importantly, getting access to the satellite so they can broadcast their news to the world. Mason, Arledge and Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) also have to figure out where they stand morally on showing acts of terrorism live on TV and how to report unconfirmed updates.
It was incredibly tense and stressful to watch and it gave me so much respect for journalists working on 24-hour news channels putting together coverage of a breaking or ever-evolving story. Mason has many journalists giving him updates and new footage coming in and he has to put it all together into a cohesive news package as it happens, making split-second judgement calls in the gallery. It is a high-pressure environment, particularly for a group that usually covers sports.
Director Tim Fehlbaum makes extensive use of archival footage of ABC’s actual broadcast, including sports anchor Jim McKay presenting the news in the studio, to honour what the journalists did. The production design team also painstakingly found period-accurate technology to replicate the studio and I found it fascinating seeing how they put news packages together with their bulky, time-consuming analogue tech.
Magaro does a remarkable job as Mason, who is thrown in at the deep end and somehow manages to keep a cool head in a stressful situation. But I cared more for Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), a German translator working for the Americans. She is a vital resource, an empathetic character and a much-needed representative of what the Olympics meant to Germany and its reputation post-WWII.
September 5 is a gripping and stressful thriller that covers a well-known crisis from a new perspective.
In cinemas from Friday 7th February
Rating: 4 out of 5.
