September 5’s obsessive detail makes it a taut ‘Hitchcock-style’ thriller-Tori Brazier-Entertainment – Metro

September 5, a taut historical thriller with uncomfortable relevance to today, has been lauded since its premiere at Venice Film Festival last summer,

Tim Fehlbaum’s film covers the events of the Munich massacre at the 1972 Olympics from the viewpoint of ABC Sports journalists, who pivot to cover the unfolding situation in real time for 22 gruelling hours.

Nearly everything we see and know as the audience is contained within the team’s studio as they clamber to verify information and update viewers – all 900 million of them.

It became the first terrorist crisis broadcast live around the globe, as Palestinian militant group Black September infiltrated the athlete’s village, taking members of the Israeli team hostage before eventually killing them.

The movie – nominated for best screenplay at the Oscars – seems both current given the current delicate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza after 15 months of brutal warfare, and very of its time; one scene shows the term ‘terrorist’ as being a word the sports crew haven’t heard before.

The cast, headed by Peter Sarsgaard, Ben Chaplin, John Magaro and Leonie Benesch, largely portray real people, who we observe slowly trying to understand the situation and balance the ethics of broadcasting potentially deadly scenes on air with trying to grab an audience and provide unrivalled coverage.

September 5 was nominated for best screenplay at the Oscars (Picture: 2024 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved)

A favourite element of September 5 for its actors is that they are so contained within their environment, and the audience only ever knows as much as the characters in the room.

‘That’s a bold choice that Tim made, and I think it was an experiment he wanted to pursue,’ comments John Magaro, who plays Geoffrey Mason, the head of the control room in Munich.

Magaro can’t resist teasing Fehlbaum for drawing inspiration from legendary director and master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock: ‘He’s compared himself a lot, it’s a pretty bold comparison. Let me start comparing myself to Brando now… But I like when filmmakers make bold choices.’

Of huge benefit to the cast was Fehlbaum’s ‘obsessive’ expertise and attention to detail, surrounding them with period-appropriate broadcast technology and props.

Sarsgaard, who portrays Roone Arledge, the real-life president of ABC Sports remembers accidentally breaking the director and writer’s heart when he triumphantly presented him with a period electric razor for a scene that was written when he would shave.

Peter Sarsgaard stars as Roone Arledge in the dramatisation of the real events (Picture: 2024 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved)

‘And [he said], “It would be the actual one, and I’m going to scuff it up, obviously, and make it look like it’s been used, but look!” and I took it and I was like, “…. I just don’t think I’m gonna shave”,’ the An Education actor grins. ‘I could tell it all mattered to him so much! All of it mattered like that, and he presented them all as gifts to us.’

This included him being ‘so proud’ of the period-specific yellow ABC jackets that the team wore at the time, which the cast weren’t thrilled by.

‘But there’s a real passion behind every detail. And he has massive respect for design. He’s from a design family, it’s in his blood. So that aspect of this film, I thought, “Gosh, he’s obsessed with it”, but it’s only really when you see it put together – oh, it was essential to have that level!’ adds Ben Chaplin, who takes on the role of Marvin Bader, ABC Sports’ head of operations.

As Sarsgaard puts it though, ‘we had to be as ferocious about following the truth as the characters in the movie’. This includes them interacting with real archival footage of ABC’s Wide World of Sports host Jim McKay, in Germany to cover the Olympics at the time.

The film is largely shot in one room, creating suspense (Picture: AP)

‘I watched that footage a couple of times before we were filming. And I was like, we have to match that, that’s the reality we’re living in – and not every film is like that,’ remembers Sarsgaard.

‘There are plenty of amazing films, and you could be in any number of fantastic films, [like] a David Lynch one where you’re just like, “Wow, we’re all talking like we’re talking through water”, but it’s real in its own way. But [McKay] was our North Star in terms of tone.’

‘You don’t want to stand out from him,’ points out Chaplin. ‘You know in the back of your mind, this is contemporary actors making a period film, but to go through and touch the reality of it was something – I found that really quite a moment I wasn’t expecting.’

It’s an intense Hitcock-esque thriller (Picture: AP)

Magaro interacts most with the McKay footage as the man running things on the day – as well as having to get to grips with all the historic equipment – and while he considers it ‘definitely a challenge’ it was also ‘such a win for the film’.

‘It really kept our performances grounded, so what a joy that was.’

Sarsgaard’s Arledge tells the team at one point that ‘emotions not politics’ should guide their broadcast, something which the cast debates as advice. To the actor that’s just the sportsman on him.

‘Watching sports is just guiding people’s emotions, following the story wherever it goes, but encouraging the downs, tracing the ups. He ended up bringing that into news, he brought entertainment into news. He brought satisfying stories into news,’ Sarsgaard argues.

The film hopes to put its journalist subjects in the spotlight once again (Picture: Paramount Pictures/Jurgen Olczyk. All Rights Reserved)

‘In some ways, obviously, this was not a story that he wanted to tell in terms of the emotional journey, and I think it probably left him on the kerb, and he had to do some soul searching. On the flip side of soul searching was the fact that 900 million people tuned in, so they were definitely interested in figuring out how to repeat this scenario.’

The team is also shown fighting for the fight to cover the breaking news with New York as well as for the best time slot using the one shared satellite. It may seem insensitive, given what they’re covering – ABC Sports inadvertently tip off Black September to a rescue attempt with their live coverage – but there is sympathy for their decisions.

‘What do you do? Is it an appalling decision to say, no, we’re going to do it?’ asks Chaplin. ‘I don’t think it is. I think it’s understandable – but you can’t undo it.’

Sarsgaard has observed September 5 leaves people ‘thinking about who gets to tell the stories, and how do we all agree on a common story that we can have different opinions about?’

For Chaplin, he hopes the film puts its subjects in the spotlight once again.
‘I’m not just talking about Israeli victims of a terrible tragedy, but also these men that did their best, and sort of innocently to a certain degree – but with expertise. I do think there is an American innocence about this story as well.’

September 5 is in cinemas now.

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