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World Trade Center September 4, 2006 |
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There were rumblings, minor as they may have been, but rumblings nonetheless, when it was announced that the first major American fictionalized motion picture about the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001 was going to be directed by Oliver Stone, a director, to say the least, who has ruffled a few conservative feathers in his time. I liked the idea, for one, Stone has always had a keen sense for making a universally awful experience (Vietnam, the Kennedy assassination) sympathetic on a human level while remaining true to his beliefs, and two, we already had a 9/11 film this year (Paul Greengrass’ superb “United 93”) that played it strictly straight and documentary-like with little editorializing, so maybe Stone could bring to the Trade Center collapse a new, angry perspective, the kind of harshly critical eye he had for an ungrateful nation in “Born on the Fourth of July”, but much to the pleasure of the conservative Right (the same Right that has seen the present administration through 9/11, Iraq, and Katrina), Stone copped out and made a film that, while respectable and heartfelt, lacks the depth and focus of his earlier masterpieces. In choosing to tell the uplifting, miraculous story of two Port Authority policemen who were rescued from the still smoking rubble two days after the horrific collapse, Stone has taken the least controversial route to take, leaving out any politics (maybe it’s still too soon?) and blame and instead focusing purely on the human side of the story, a story that remains painfully emotional and heroic, but oddly familiar and lacking in dramatic content. Or course the story of John McLaughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) trapped in the fallen, dangerous structure (one rescuer refers to the unstable mountain of rubble as a “pile of pickup sticks”) resonates on the heroic survival level, and the anxieties of their wives (played by Oscar caliber actresses Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal respectively) speaks to all of the widows and family members who couldn’t reach their fallen loved ones to say goodbye, and for the performances, and the shear professionalism undertaken in recreating the tone and aftermath, “World Trade Center” is a first class production, but because of Stone’s previous body of work, it all feels overtly cautious, as if to atone for the sins of recent flops the director felt it necessary to work his way back into the fold with a harmless melodrama of the most infamous day in America’s recent history. Maybe it’s hypocritical to praise a film for its look, acting, and emotional resonance while criticizing its polarizing director for easing off of his usual plan of action, but I suppose that’s what you get when you undertake such a weighty subject with expectations based on past experiences, a film that remains respectable, but tame by Oliver Stone’s standards. Incidentally, for a more personal, angrier, and philosophically deeper take on a recent American tragedy try to watch Spike Lee’s amazing, wrenching four-hour Katrina documentary “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts”, it’s the kind of critical, intensely emotional and skeptical study of a historic tragedy that “World Trade Center” isn’t, and it’s a must see.
by Adam Suraf
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