Violence and the Cozy

This chapter speaks to the contradiction between violence and domestic tranquility in two very different films. In The Godfather films and Steven Spielberg&s;s Munich , the tension set up between a harried present and a cozy past can, for a viewer, generate an intense nostalgia. The characters in the films and the narrative sweep of the films themselves play on the longing for the simple pleasures of family meals versus the intense violence engaged in by the characters. In The Godfather films, it is the war between mobsters and interfamilial struggles. Munich concerns revenge on an international scale for the murder of Israeli athletes in 1972. The avengers take breaks from their gruesome task by indulging in voluptuous meals.