Leonie Benesch’s role in the docudrama thriller “September 5” is invented, but the story revolves around a grim reality: how American sports broadcasters learned how to handle hard news the fast way when terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics.
And yet Benesch’s character, a German interpreter named Marianne, is more than a practical employee problem-solving in the control room — she represents a country whose dream of international reemergence after World War II has been shattered. “She’s someone who wants to acknowledge what her people did but still move past it,” Benesch says. “I’m sure part of the reason she’s staying in that control room is because she’s hoping for good news.”
Fresh off her starring turn in the Oscar-nominated “The Teachers’ Lounge,” Benesch is again getting notice for her performance in a tense situation, her character’s translating skills help to process an unfolding nightmare. “She was perfect for my approach of having it be as real as possible,” says director Tim Fehlbaum. “When she listens to something coming in, she’s 100% that character, in that moment.”
Fehlbaum intentionally kept Benesch away from preproduction meetups or table reads as a helpful isolation from the rest of the cast. “We liked the idea of me being a little on my own, thrown into it,” she says. “Because Marianne is not one of the sports guys. She was sent to translate, so she’s got her own corner to do her job.”
For research, Benesch met with a U.N. interpreter and learned about the gig’s unique frame of mind. “She said there have been times where she didn’t remember what was being said because she was in that zone where you hear the words in one ear, and your brain is figuring out what it means, and you’re already speaking,” Benesch says. “So I wanted it to look like a zoning-out, a focus.”
Marianne can only compartmentalize so much when there are dread-filled visuals that accompany the information she’s relaying. Benesch says it made a huge difference that the filmmakers made sure the control room set’s bank of monitors showed real images and footage (albeit mostly re-created), and not green screens that required actors to imagine what was being beamed in.
“When we see the person on the balcony holding a gun to one of the hostage’s heads, I remember the tension in the room, everyone going, ‘This is happening,’” she recalls. “You put yourself in that mind-set. And I’d not seen any coverage from back then; I grew up without a TV.”
Benesch’s childhood in Tübingen, a German city southwest of Stuttgart, may have been tube-deficient, but it wasn’t movie-free, and she became fascinated with how films were made. Dad’s laptop, when available, became a crucial window. “I sometimes stole money from my mom’s purse to buy DVDs, not to watch the films but the behind-the-scenes material. These people are traveling the world, getting paid to walk and talk in amazing locations. It’s a fascinating profession.”
Don’t mistake that interest, though, for wanting to step behind the camera at some point. After performing in a children’s circus — and wanting to be Keira Knightley in “Pirates of the Caribbean” — Benesch took her talent to drama school in London and realized acting was satisfaction enough. “I like being a part in someone else’s puzzle,” she says. “I don’t want to make the puzzle.”
On “September 5,” the jigsaw Benesch found herself interlocked with was the nuts-and-bolts of an earlier era’s broadcast reporting, complete with vintage equipment. “It’s a declaration of love to the analog TV-making world,” she says admiringly. “The art department is my favorite, and especially on this one, it was amazing.”
But as with the many monitors, the walkie-talkies and rotary phones and control panels all worked, a verisimilitude that, to Benesch, made each uninterrupted, carefully choreographed take that much more stressful. “I was very happy not to have to touch any buttons, because you’d flick a switch and something would happen. Imagine getting that wrong with a room full of people.”
An exchange between Benesch and John Magaro as producer Geoffrey Mason, where their rattled, tired characters articulate the awful totality of what’s transpired, didn’t work for another reason entirely and was rethought and reshot.
“It was too spelled out,” explains Benesch. “A lot of time, when monumental stuff happens, we don’t have the words. It was a conversation [these two] would have a couple years down the line but not now. We wanted to not find words for the emotions these people are feeling.”
