Daily Dialogue — October 9, 2013
INT. LOBBY OF ZWAITER’S APARTMENT — LATE AFTERNOON
The lobby is dark. Zwaiter opens the front door and steps inside. He juggles his grocery bag and reaches for the light switch. He flicks the switch, and the light’s timer starts.
Avner and Robert are standing between Zwaiter and the curved staircase. Zwaiter looks at the two men, and they look at him. Everyone’s blank for a moment, then:
AVNER: Are you Wael Zwaiter?
ZWAITER: Yes? I’m sorry I– I–
A beat. Zwaiter shakes his head “no,” confused. Robert and Avner draw their guns; Avner’s gun gets caught momentarily in his belt. Zwaiter is frozen.
AVNER: Are you Wael–
ROBERT: He said yes already, he–
AVNER: I didn’t hear him say that he–
Zwaiter walks slowly to Avner and puts his hand gently on Avner’s gun; he tries carefully to lower it.
Robert fires two shots, through the grocery bags and into Zwaiter’s chest. Zwaiter looks at Robert, shocked. Then Avner fires, two shots, again through the shopping bags, which Zwaiter continues to hold. Zwaiter screams in pain, then drops to his knees, then falls flat on his face, crushing the groceries in the bag. There’s a sound of a bottle breaking; maraschino liquid, green soap, orange soda, grape juice, mixed with dark blood, spill out under Zwaiter. He tries to roll over but can’t; he’s panting, sobbing.
ZWAITER: (almost inaudible) La, la. Aiuto, aiuto, please, please…
He rolls over onto his back. Robert walks up close and fires another shot right into Zwaiter’s chest. Avner does the same. Zwaiter’s already stopped moving. Dazed, they each fire again.
— Munich (2005), screenplay by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, based on a book by George Jonas
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is assassination suggested by Aarthi Ramanathan. Today’s suggestion by Adam Scott Thompson.
Trivia: After getting the rights to George Jonas’s book “Vengeance”, Steven Spielberg commissioned three scripts: one from David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples, one from Charles Randolph, and one from Eric Roth. Roth’s script was chosen and subsequently revised by Tony Kushner, after Kushner first declined to co-write the screenplay; he felt it was too controversial and too complicated to be his first screenplay for a feature film.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary from Adam: “In the film, the question “Do you know why we’re here?” is asked more times than in the script. What I like best about the dialogue, apart from its brevity, is that the centerpiece is a question (always great for drama) and that it says more than any speech possibly could.
Jules in “Pulp Fiction” does a lot of talking before killing someone, perhaps because he’s such a tenured pro. Avner and Robert, despite their backgrounds, are amateur assassins. Robert seems more calm and focused despite not being the military man that Avner is; the dialogue reflects this.
The question Avner asks is revealing. He wants Zwaiter to understand that this isn’t some random killing, but he also wants to hear from Zwaiter’s own mouth that he knows why he’s being killed and understands that he brought it on himself. Avner has a job to do but he wants to return home with his conscience intact.
Zwaiter’s last words (different from the film) peel back his humanity. If he had laughed maniacally or spouted obscenities it would make his killing go down easier with the audience — but that doesn’t happen. He’s a frail, old man in that moment, very human, and no matter the extent of his role in Munich, when his life is taken you feel it.”