YARGB, which is short for "Yet Another Really Great Blog" has an interesting post titled, "Munich is an Unwitting Indulgence in Nihilism":

Somewhere along the line, Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner bought into the absurd myth that much of the Arab terrorism of the past fifty years is the inevitable blow back response of Palestinians whose land and heritage were allegedly stolen by Jewish imperialists . Munich is their recently released creation---and it is an appalling piece of work. Based on the highly questionable book by George Jonas, Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, this film is far too long and exhausting. It is often boring. A group of four assassins are sent on a mission, to kill one by one, Palestinians suspected of collaborating in the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes during the 1972 games held in Munich. These misfits soon wonder if they are morally any better than their pursued quarry. The latter often come across as warm and fuzzy human beings doing the best they can. There is even a ridiculous scene where the Israelis and the Palestinians inadvertently spend the night together. It suggests that a little love and understanding will bring about peace. The violence of the terrorists would cease if only the Israelis were more open to dialogue. Throughout of the film, the recurring theme is that violence is ultimately useless in fighting terrorism. It will probably even make things far worse. Needless to add, the creators of Munich are also indirectly commenting on our post 9/11 existence.

Spielberg and Kushner, to be kind, are unwitting nihilists. The logical conclusion of their morally equivalent premise is that the defenders of Western Civilization values are little better than their attackers. We have no one to blame but ourselves for allowing our elected leaders to exacerbate the tensions. Violent responses to terrorism must give way to improved communication and good will. After all, our disregard of the rights of the Third World’s citizenry got us into this mess. Is this bizarre perspective an anomaly? Not in the least. Both men are mainstream representatives of the leftist ideologues who control the Democratic Party in the United States and the Labor Party of Israel. Such individuals and their cohorts have to be defeated politically. They may mean well, but their ideas turned into actual policies are dangerous. This movie is a not so gentle reminder of how crazy the Left is in the early part of this century. If they are not hindered, there may not be a next one. The stakes are truly that high.

I'm not sure how unwitting the nihilism in Munich is. It's not all that new a development either--in 2000, Thomas Hibbs documented Hollywood nihilism in its many forms (benign in the form of the show that Hibbs takes his title from, and otherwise in most cinematic examples) in his fascinating book, Shows About Nothing. He spotted its presence as far back as the 1991 remake of Cape Fear.

When I wrote my article earlier this month for TCS Daily, space requirements caused me to leave this quote from Hollywood, Interrupted co-author Andrew Breitbart on the cutting room floor. Andrew told me Hollywood movies these days essentially come in two flavors: the relatively apolitical big budget shoot-'em up or sci-fi movie, and the movies Tinseltown makes when it wants to Make A Statement--and win at Oscartime:

But then you have the Oscar/Sundance/Miramax axis. And that’s the type of film that is done on the cheap by Hollywood standard that tends to be the message movie, that conveys perfectly where Hollywood is intellectually and artistically. If you were to isolate that type of movie over the last ten years, you would see that what Hollywood is elevating is nothing sort of nihilism. Whether that be American Beauty, or even a Syriana, what you see are movies that pretty much… These people long ago put America on trial, and found America, and its underlying consumer-oriented culture to be guilty. And this is their way of, on the other hand producing it, and on the other, looking for immediate artistic penance.

And of course, Munich's screenwriter Tony Kushner has also long put Israel on trial, as the New Republic's Leon Wieseltier noted in his review earlier this month:

All this is consistent with Tony Kushner's view that Zionism, as he told Ori Nir of Haaretz last year, was "not the right answer," and that the creation of Israel was "a mistake," and that "establishing a state means f***ing people over." (If he really seeks to understand Middle Eastern terrorism, he might ponder the extent to which statelessness, too, can mean f***ing people over.) When Avner's reckoning with his deeds takes him to the verge of a breakdown, he joins his wife and child in Brooklyn and refuses to return to Israel, as if decency is impossible there. No, Kushner is not an anti-Semite, nor a self-hating Jew, nor any of those other insults that burnish his notion of himself as an American Jewish dissident (he is one of those people who never speaks, but only speaks out). He is just a perfectly doctrinaire progressive.

Indeed--and it's rather strange modern definition of "progressive" when it means a path towards nihilism.

Or has that always been its definition?