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Wednesday, September 30, 2015

MUNICH [2005]

The world was watching in 1972 as 11 Israeli athletes were murdered at the Munich Olympics. 
This is the story of what happened next
 There is great uncertainty about how many Israelis are being hostage in the apartment.
It now appears that Black September has tossed a piece of paper out the window.
A list of demands.
They want what they call 'The Israeli war machine' to release 200 Arabs,
which it insists are political prisoners or the hostages will be killed.
The terrorist communique ends with an appeal for revolutionaries of the world to unite.
~TV Announcer

Daphna: I tried not to think about you, but I couldn't.
Avner: I have the world's most boring job. What's going to happen to me?
Daphna: Well, they were just athletes. They went to the Olympics. Look what happened to them.

It's the same as Eichmann.
We say to these butchers: 
"You didn't want to share this world with us, then we don't have to share this world with you."
There's legitimacy for this, am I correct?
Ambushed and slaughtered again
while the rest of the world is playing games, Olympic torches
and brass bands and dead Jews in Germany.
And the world couldn't care less.
~Golda Meir

These people, they're sworn to destroy us.
Forget peace for now. We have to show them we're strong.
We have laws, we represent civilization.
Some people say we can't afford to be civilized.
I've always resisted such people.
But I don't know who these maniacs are, and where they are come from.
Palestinians? They're not recognizable.
You tell me what law protects people like these.
Today I'm hearing with new ears.
Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.
~Golda Meir

If you can't decide in one day, you can't decide.
~General Zamir

Avner: You're not going to give me any information?
Ephraim: We deposit money from a fund that doesn't exist,
into a box we don't know about, in a bank we never set foot in.
We can't help you because we never heard of you before.
You'll do what the terrorist do.
You think they report back to home base? They don't.
We want them dead.

I could be anybody. You could be anybody, too.
Identity. That's the boring part now.
Here's what isn't boring.
As long as you don't work for any government...
We can locate almost anyone for anyone anywhere and we are ideology promiscuous.
We love everybody, hate everybody. I get my feelings confused.
If you're not working for any government...
we know, or we find... we don't find, you don't pay.
~Louis

 Mahmoud Hamshari: I believe what he meant by this is that now the world will begin hearing us.
We are, for 24 years, the world's largest refugee population. Our homes taken from us.
Living in camps, no future, no food. Nothing decent for our children.
Robert: So was the attack in Munich justified?
Mahmoud Hamshari: The PLO condemns attacks on civilians. Through for 24 years...
Marie Claude: Tell your newspaper that.
Mahmoud Hamshari: ... our civilians have been attacked by the Israelis day after day...
Marie Claude: Tell them about all the years and years of Palestinians blood spilled by Israel.
And who mourns for us?
Mahmoud Hamshari: You know, Israel just bombed 2 refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon.
200 people killed, right after Munich they did this.
Marie Claude: It did not begin in Munich.
And where does it end? How will it ever end?

Mother: I'm proud of what you are doing.
Avner: You don't know what I'm doing.
Mother: I look at you and I know everything I need to know.

Avner: I can't do what I'm doing if I can't see you.
Daphna: What are you doing?
Don't do it then, Avner. This is our home.
Avner: You're the only home I ever had.
[Daphna chuckles] What?
Daphna: This is so corny.
Avner: It wasn't easy for me to say that.
Daphna: I bet.
Avner: Don't laugh at me then.
Daphna: Why did I have to marry a sentimentalist? You're ruining my life.

Ephraim: Lots of people in Mossad don't know about you. No one knows.
So everyone's asking, "Who's killing the fedayeen? Is it our guys? Why weren't we told?"
Big ego. Lots of screaming.
I can maybe include one or two of you, but excluding Mossad or the army is impossible.
Accept it.
Avner: We will, but our source won't.
Ephraim: Who is your source?
It's time you told me.
That, by the way, is not a request. It's an order.
Carl: You can't order him. He doesn't work for you.
Ephraim: Shut up! I pay you. You work for me.
Avner: I work for a metal box in a bank in Geneva. The box pays me.
Ephraim: You want to find it empty?
Avner: I want you to let us do our work.
Ephraim: What's the matter with you? With all of you?
Grow up and do it quick.
This is not a game, a fucking game.
Who has the source? Where are you getting your information?
Give me his goddamn number!
Hans: I hope the old lady next door enjoyed that.
She's a little deaf but I doubt she had any trouble hearing you.
Ephraim: Give me the source and we'll let you take part.
Avner: Let us go to Beirut.
After Beirut, we'll use our source to find the remaining targets.
Let us do out job.

Papa: The world has been rough with you, with your tribe.
It's right to respond roughly to such treatment.
You pay well and you pay promptly, so we'll continue together.
But no more infractions.
Avner: Thank you. You have my word.

You could have been my son.
But you're not.
Remember that.
We'll do business but you aren't family.
~Papa

Ali: Eventually the Arab states will rise against Israel.
They don't like Palestinians, but they hate the Jews more.
It won't be like 1967.
The rest of the world will see by then what the Israelis do to us.
They won't help when Egypt and Syria attack. Even Jordan.
Israel will cease to exist.
Avner: This is a dream.
You can't take back a country you never had.
Ali: You sound like a Jew.
Avner: Fuck you. I'm the voice inside your head telling you what you already know.
You people have nothing to bargain with.
You'll never get the land back.
You'll all die old men in refugee camps waiting for Palestine.
Ali: We have a lot of children. They'll have children. So we can wait forever.
And if we need to, we can make the whole planet unsafe for Jews.
Avner: You kill Jews and the world feels bad for them and thinks you are animals.
Ali: Yes.
But then the world will see how they've made us into animals.
They'll start to ask questions about the conditions in our cages.
 Avner: You are Arabs. There are lots of places for Arabs.
Ali: You're a Jew sympathizer.
All you Germans, you're too soft of Israel.
Well, you give us money, but you feel guilty about Hitler.
And the Jews exploit that guilt.
My father didn't gas any Jews.
Avner: Tell me something, Ali, do you really miss your father's olive trees?
Do you honestly think you have to get back all that... that nothing?
That chalky soil and stone huts, is that what you really want for your children?
Ali: It absolutely is.
It will take a hundred years, but we'll win.
How long did it take the Jews to get their own country?
How long did it take the Germans to make Germany?
Avner: And look how well that worked out.
Ali: You don't know what it is not to have a home.
That's why you European Reds don't get it.
You say, "It's nothing.", but you have a home to come back to.
ETA, ANC, IRA, we all pretend we care about your international revolution, but we don't care.
We want to be nations.
Home is everything.

Louis: Salameh is in London.
He goes there periodically to meet with his CIA contact.
Avner: His what?
Louis: Salameh works for the CIA.
Avner: Bullshit!
Louis: Salameh guarantees that Black September won't touch American diplomats.
In exchange, the CIA gives him lots of money.
And they don't ask what he uses it for.
Avner: Did he tell them about Munich in advance?
Did the CIA know about Munich?
Louis: The CIA didn't even know Black September existed before Munich.
Since then, he's been busy, hasn't he?
All manner of costly exercises.
Shooting tourists in the Athens airport, blowing up pharmacies in Amsterdam,
and that Mossad agent in Barcelona before that.
Europe hasn't been this interesting since Napoleon marched to Moscow.
Salameh is in London.
For the usual price.

Steve: I think we have a double agent in our midst.
Carl: Don't you dare accuse me of that!
My son died in '67, you foul-mouthed son of a bitch!
Everything you can ask, I've done for Israel.
Hans: Ask for a reassignment if this is so distasteful.
Carl: Why, it's not distasteful to you?
Steve: No. Cause the only blood that matters to me is Jewish blood.
Nice job, eh, nice job leading.

Avner: Stop chasing the mice inside your skull.
Carl: I never thought you'd last.
Avner: I thought the same about you.
From the beginning you seemed so reluctant.
Carl: I was born reluctant, ask my mother.
If I can't kvetch, I can't do my job.
You ever feel reluctant?
Avner: I'm not comfortable with confusion.
Carl: I knew guys like you in the army.
You'll do any terrifying thing you're asked to do, but you have to do it running.
You think you can outrun your fears, your doubts.
The only thing that really scares you guys is stillness.
But everyone's overtaken, eventually.


Papa: We inhabit a world of intersecting secrecies.
We live and die at the places where those secrecies meet.
That's what we accept.
We buy information for you from your enemies. This alerts them.
You're not the only people looking for names.
Avner: You're telling me I'm being hunted now?
Louis: He's telling you it's time for you to quit.
Papa: The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
but time and chance happens to them all.
Evil falls suddenly.
Who can say when it falls?


Robert: So you're really gonna kill her?
All this blood comes back to us.
Avner: Eventually it will work. Even if it takes years, we'll beat them.
Robert: We're Jews, Avner.
Jews don't do wrong because our enemies do wrong.
Avner: We can't afford to be that decent anymore.
Robert: I don't know that we ever were that decent.
Suffering thousands of years of hatred doesn't make you decent.
But we're supposed to be righteous.
That's a beautiful thing. That's Jewish.
That's what I knew, that's what I was taught.
And now I'm losing it, and I lose that, that's everything. That's my soul.
Avner: You need to go rest somewhere. You don't have to do this one.
When I need you again, I'll find you.

And to dispatch our 6 dispatched targets
we must have spent something close to $2 million, right?
Mrs. Meir says to the Knesset, 
the world must see that killing Jews will be from now on an expensive proposition.
But killing Palestinians isn't exactly cheap.
~Hans

It's dangerous going after Salameh.
But he planned the Munich massacre.
Eliminate him, and they'll let you go home, don't you think?
~Louis

Mother: Everyone in Europe died. Most of my family. A huge family.
I never talked to you about it.
Avner: I knew.
Mother: You knew? So what was there to say?
I didn't die because I came here.
When I arrived, I walked up to the top of a hill in Jerusalem and prayed for a child.
I never prayed before, but I was praying then.
And I could feel every one of them praying with me.
You are what we prayed for.
What you did, you did for us.
You did for your daughter, but also for us.
Every one of the ones who died, died wanting this.
We had to take it, because no one will ever give it to us.
A place to be a Jew among Jews, subject to no one.
I thank God for hearing my prayer.
Avner: Do you want to know, Mama?
Do you want me to tell you what I did?
Mother: No.
Whatever it took, whatever it takes, a place on earth. We have a place on earth. At last.

If you're Mossad, you know who I am.
If you don't, tell Ephraim, Avner came to see him.
I won't hesitate to kill other people's children if you hurt my child, understand?
Or wives if you hurt my wife, or fathers if you hurt my father, I don't care.
I'll go to the newspapers,
I'll give every name of everybody who was in the meetings.
I'll tell them everything if you don't leave my family alone, okay?!
~Avner

Avner: Did we accomplish anything at all?
Every man we killed has been replaced by worse.
Ephraim: Why cut my fingernails? They'll grow back.
Avner: Did we kill to replace the terrorist leadership or the Palestinian leadership?
You tell me what we've done.
Ephraim: You killed them for the sake of a country you now choose to abandon.
The country your mother and father built, that you were born into.
You killed them for Munich, for the future, for peace.
Avner: There's no peace at the end of this, no matter what you believe.



*****

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MINE [2004]

 I Already Forget How I Used To Feel About You
Random thoughts for Valentine's Day, 2004.
Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap.
~Joel Barish

The first thing we need you to do, Mr. Barish, 
is to go home and collect everything you own that has some association with Clementine.
Anything.
And we'll use these items to create a map of Clementine in your brain, okay?
So, we'll need photos, clothing, gifts, books she may have bought you,
CDs you may have bought together, journal entries.
We want to empty your home, we want to empty your life of Clementine.
And after the mapping is done, our technicians will do the erasing in your home tonight.
That way, when you awake in the morning, 
you'll find yourself in your own bed as if nothing had happened,
a new life awaiting you.
~Dr. Mierzwiak

Look at it out here, it's all falling apart!
I'm erasing you, and I'm happy.
You did it to me first!
I can't believe you did this to me.
Clem, can you hear me?
By morning you'll be gone.
The perfect ending to this piece-of-shit story!
~Joel Barish

You don't tell me things, Joel.
I'm an open book, I tell you everything.
You don't trust me.
~Clementine Kruczynski


Am I ugly?
When I was a kid, I thought I was.
Sometimes I think people don't understand how lonely it is to be a kid.
Like you don't matter.
So, I'm 8, and I have these toys, these dolls.
My favorite is this ugly girl doll who I call Clementine.
And I keep yelling at her, "You can't be ugly! Be pretty!"
It's weird.
Like if I can transform her, I would magically change too.
~Clementine Kruczynski




 Hide me somewhere deeper, somewhere really buried.
Hide me in your humiliation.
~Clementine Kruczynski



Clementine: Didn't figure you'd show your face around me again.
I guess I thought you were humiliated.
You did run away, after all.
Joel: I just needed to see you.
I'd like to take you out or something.
Clementine: You're married.
Joel: Not yet. Not married. No, I'm not married.
Clementine: Look man, I'm telling you right off the bat I'm high maintenance,
so I'm not gonna tiptoe around your marriage, or whatever it is you've got going there.
If you wanna be with me, you're with me.
Joel: Okay.
Clementine: Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them,
or I'm gonna make them alive.
But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind.
Don't assign me yours.
Joel: I remember that speech really well.
Clementine: I had you pegged, didn't I?
Joel: You had the whole human race pegged.
I still thought you were gonna save my life, even after that.
It would be different if we could just give it another go around.
Remember me. Try your best.
Clementine: Maybe we can.

Clementine: This is it, Joel, it's gonna be gone soon.
Joel: I know.
Clementine: What do we do?
Joel: Enjoy it.

Joel: I've gotta catch my ride.
Clementine: So go.
Joel: I did.
I thought maybe you were a nut, but you were exciting.
Clementine: I wish you'd stayed.
Joel: I wish I'd stayed too. Now I wish I'd stayed.
I wish I'd done a lot of things.
Oh, God, I wish I had... I wish I'd stayed. I do.
Clementine: Well, I came back downstairs and you were gone.
Joel: I walked out, I walked out the door.
Clementine: Why?
Joel: I don't know. I felt like a scared little kid. I was like...
It was above my head, I don't know.
Clementine: You were scared?
Joel: Yeah. Thought you knew that about me.
I ran back to the bonfire trying to outrun my humiliation, I think.
Clementine: Was it something I said?
Joel: Yeah. You said, "So go"... with such disdain, you know.
Clementine: Oh, I'm sorry.
Joel: It's okay.
Clementine: Joely, what if you stayed this time?
Joel: I walked out the door. There's no memory left.
Clementine: Come back and make up a good-bye, at least.
Let's pretend we have one.
Bye, Joel.
Joel: I love you.
Clementine, whispering: Meet me in Mantouk.

Clementine: I'm not a concept, Joel.
I'm just a fucked-up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind.
I'm not perfect.
Joel: I can't see anything that I don't like about you.
Clementine: But you will.
Joel: Right now I can't.
Clementine: But you will. You will think of things,
and I'll get bored with you and feel trapped because that's what happens with me.
Joel: Okay.
Clementine: Okay.




*****

Monday, September 28, 2015

CLOSER [2004]

If You Believe In Love At First Sight, 
You Never Stop Looking


 Dan: You've never left somebody you still love?
Alice: No.

Anna: Is your heroine based on someone you know?
Dan: Yes, she's someone called Alice.
Anna: How does she feel about you stealing her life?
Dan: Borrowing her life.
I'm dedicating the book to her. She's pleased.

 Dan: She's too young.
She works in a cafe near here. She's coming to meet me.
Anna: Why are you wasting her time?
Dan: You're judgmental.
Anna: You're devious.
Dan: I'm not wasting her time.
She's completely lovable, and completely unleavable.
Anna: And you don't want someone else getting their dirty hands on her.
Men are crap.
Dan: But all the same...
Anna: ... they're still crap.

Larry: But why would he pretend to be you?
Anna: I think he likes me.
Larry: Funny way of showing it.
Can't he send you flowers?

Alice: I'm waiting for you.
Dan: To do what?
Alice: Leave me.
Dan: I'm not gonna leave you. I totally love you.

Why won't you let me love you?
~Alice

 It's a lie.
It's a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully, 
and all the glittering assholes who appreciate art say it's beautiful
because that's what they want to see.
But the people in the photos are sad and alone.
But the pictures make the world seem beautiful
so the exhibition's reassuring, which makes it a lie.
And everyone loves a big, fat lie.
~Alice

Dan: Look at me. Tell me you're not in love with me.
Anna: I'm not in love with you.

Larry: I had a chat with young Alice.
Anna: Fancy her?
Larry: Of course, not as much as you.
Anna: Why not?
Larry: You're a woman, she's a girl.
She has the moronic beauty of youth, but she's sly.
Anna: She seems open to me.
Larry: Yeah, that's how she wants to seem.
You forget you're dealing with a clinical observer of the human carnival.
Anna: Am I, now?
Larry: Oh, yeah.
Anna: You seem more like the cat that got the cream. Stop licking yourself.
Larry: That's the nastiest thing you've ever said to me.

Dan: I'm sorry.
Alice: Irrelevant. What are you sorry for?
Dan: Everything.
Alice: Why didn't you tell me before?
Dan: Cowardice.
Alice: Is it because she's successful?
Dan: No. It's because she doesn't need me.
Alice: Did you bring her here?
Dan: Yes.
Alice: Didn't she get married?
Dan: She stopped seeing me.
Alice: Is that when we went to the country? To celebrate our 3rd anniversary?
[Dan nod]
Did you phone her? Beg her to come back?
When you went for your long, lonely walks?
Dan: Yes.
Alice: You're a piece of shit!
Dan: Deception is brutal.
I'm not pretending otherwise.
Alice: How? How does it work? How do you do this to someone?
[Dan shrug]
Not good enough!
Dan: I fell in love with her, Alice.
Alice: Oh, as if you had no choice?
There's a moment. There's always a moment.
"I can do this, I can give in to this, or I can resist it."
And I don't know when your moment was, but I bet you there was one.
I'm going.
Dan, holds the door: It's not safe out there.
Alice: Oh, and it's safe in here?
Dan: What about your things?
Alice: I don't need things.
Dan: Where will you go?
Alice: Disappear.

Alice: Dan, can I still see you?
Dan: I can't see you. If I see you, I'll never leave you.
Alice: What will you do if I find someone else?
Dan: Be jealous.
Alice: You still fancy me.
Dan: Of course.
Alice: You're lying. I've been you.
[start sobbing] Will you hold me?
[Dan hugs her] I amuse you, but I bore you.
Dan: No, no...
Alice: You did love me?
Dan: I'll always love you. I hate hurting you.
Alice: Then why are you?
Dan: Cause I'm selfish.
And I think I'll be happier with her.
Alice: You won't. You'll miss me.
No one will ever love you as much as I do.
Why isn't love enough?
I'm the one who leaves. I'm supposed to leave you. I'm the one who leaves.

Larry: Are you leaving me, because of this?
Anna: Dan.
Larry: Cupid? He's our joke.
Anna: I love him.
Larry: You're seeing him now?
Since when?
Anna: Since my opening last year.
I'm disgusting.
Larry: You're phenomenal. You're so clever.
Why did you marry me?
Anna: I stopped seeing him. I wanted us to work.
Larry: Why did you tell me you wanted children?
Anna: Because I did.
Larry: And now you want children with him?
Anna: Yes. I don't know.
Larry: But, we're happy... aren't we?
You're gonna go and live with him?
Anna: You stay here if you want.
Larry: Oh, look, I don't give a fuck about the spoils.
You did this to me the day that we met.
You let me hang myself for your amusement.
Why didn't you just tell me the second I walked through the door?
Anna: I was scared.
Larry: You're coward, you spoilt bitch.
Are you dressed cause you thought I might hit you?
What do you think I am?
Anna: I've been hit before.
Larry: Not by me.
Is he a good fuck?
Anna: Don't do this.
Larry: Just answer the question. Is he good?
Anna: Yes.
Larry: Better than me?
Anna: Different.
Larry: Better?
Anna: Gentler.
Larry: What does that mean?
Anna: You know what it means.
Larry: Tell me. I treat you like a whore?
Anna: Sometimes.
Larry: Why would that be?
Anna: I'm sorry, you're...
Larry: Don't say it!
Don't you fucking say, "You're too good for me."
I am, but don't say it.
You're making the mistake of your life.
You're leaving me because you believe that you don't deserve happiness, but you do, Anna.

Larry: Come home with me. It's safe. Let me look after you.
Alice: I don't need looking after.
Larry: Everyone needs looking after.
Alice: I'm not your revenge fuck.
Larry: I'll pay you.
Alice: I don't need your money.

Larry: Alice, tell me something true.
Alice: Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off, 
but it's better if you do.
Larry: You're cold. You're all cold at heart.


I'll sign on one condition.
We skip this.
We go to my sleek new surgery and we christen the patients' bed with our final fuck.
I know you don't want to, and I know you think I'm sick for asking, but that's what I'm asking.
For old times' sake.
Because I'm obsessed with you.
Because I can't get over you unless...
Because I think, on some small level, you owe me something for deceiving me so exquisitely.
For all these reasons, I am begging you to give me your body.
You'd be my whore.
And in return, I will pay you with your liberty.
You do this, I swear I will not contact you again.
~Larry

Dan: What do you expect me to do?
Anna: Understand.
Dan: Why didn't you lie to me?
Anna: Because we said we'd always tell each other the truth.
Dan: What's so great about the truth?
Try lying for a change. It's the currency of the world.

Dan: I want Anna back.
Larry: She's made her choice.
Dan: I owe you an apology. I fell in love with her.
My intention was not to make you suffer.
Larry: So where's the apology, you cunt?
Dan: I apologize.
If you love her, you'll let her go so she can be happy.
Larry: She doesn't want to be happy.
Dan: Everybody wants to be happy.
Larry: Depressives don't.
They want to be unhappy to confirm they're depressed.
If they were happy, they couldn't be depressed any more.
They'd have to go out into the world and live, which can be depressing.
Dan: Anna's not a depressive.
Larry: Isn't she?
Dan: I love her.
Larry: Boo-hoo, so do I.
Dan: She's gone back to you because she can't bear your suffering.
You don't know who she is.
You love her like a dog loves its owner.
Larry: And the owner loves the dog for so doing.
Dan: You'll hurt her. You'll never forgive her.
Larry: Of course I forgive her. I have forgiven her.
Without forgiveness we're savages.
You're drowning.
Dan: You only met her because of me.
Larry: Yeah, thanks.
Dan: It's a joke. Your marriage is a joke.
Larry: Here's a good one.
She never sent the divorce papers to her lawyer.
Now, to a towering romantic hero like you, I don't doubt I am somewhat common.
But I am, nevertheless, what she has chosen, and we must respect what the woman wants.
If you go near her again, I swear I will kill you.

I didn't do it to give her a nice time.
I fucked her to fuck you up.
A good fight is never clean.
She enjoyed it.
As you know, she loves a guilty fuck.
~Larry



Alice: This is the moment of your life.
Dan: You were perfect.
Alice: I still am.

I would have loved you forever.
~Alice

Dan: I love you.
Alice: Where?
Dan: What?
Alice: Show me. Where is this love?
I can't see it. I can't touch it. I can't feel it.
I can hear it. I can hear some words, but I can't do anything with your easy words.
Whatever you say, it's too late.




*****