Aug. 16, 2006 – What can art illuminate about Sept. 11, 2001? If anything? Again, the question arises, is it too soon?
Director Oliver Stone doesn't think so, and the critics don't either, though they disagree on the artistic merits of "World Trade Center."
On that day, when the Manhattan towers came tumbling down, 2,749 people died. Only 20 survivors were found in the rubble. The movie tells the story of two survivors – Port Authority Police Officers John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno – along with those stories of a handful of others. It was made with the full cooperation of the two officers and their families.
"Stone uses the extraordinary cinematic skills he's honed in fireball pictures such as 'Platoon,' 'JFK,' 'Natural Born Killers' and 'Born on the Fourth of July' to infuse an essentially static story (once the towers collapse, it's basically about two men in a hole and their helpless families) with passion and intensity," Eleanor Ringel Gillespie says in the Atlanta Journal-constitution."
"He turns their triumph into an emblem of the nation's post-September 11 triumph of the spirit (at least for a time), and in doing so he creates a kind of collective catharsis. Like the ancient Greek playwrights."
David Ansen in Newsweek agrees with Gillespie. He says, "If Stone has a theory about September 11, he's keeping it to himself. Stone uses art as a historical filter, as a way to bring people together."
Ansen says, "WTC is not about terrorism. It's explicitly about heroism, and may even strike some as a surprisingly conventional film from this controversial filmmaker. At the simplest level, it's a rescue movie. Stone's terrifying re-creation of the towers' imploding – the sound of it – is the first time a filmmaker has shown us what it must have felt like from the inside, and the scene's impact is indelible."
Ansen hosted a live talk show on the film, including comments from relatives of those lost that day. To take a look at the transcript, visit transcript.
Gillespie says the movie starts innocently. "Stone begins by reminding us how very ordinarily the day began. McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Jimeno (Michael PeZa) report to their jobs as usual. There's the usual early-morning debriefing – keep an eye peeled for an 11-year-old runaway from Rhode Island. And the usual rounds, giving directions to tourists, giving a probable drug dealer the once-over."
"However," Gillespie says, "a shadow of a plane – that's all Stone ever shows – is briefly reflected against a building. A bump is felt. We hear someone on CNN say, 'Something relatively devastating is happening.'"
"The rest of the film," Gillespie says, "divides its attention three ways: the trapped men, pinned and in pain, striving to keep each other awake with the reminder, 'if you don't make it, I don't make it'; their wives – Maria Bello as Donna McLoughlin and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a very pregnant Allison Jimeno, trapped in their own kind of hell, not knowing when, or if, their men will come home; and a lone, deeply religious former Marine, Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon), who put on his uniform and drove to the site, where he bluffed his way into the rubble and found McLoughlin and Jimeno."
The appearance of Karnes could seem to add a false note – a melodramatic effect cooked up by Hollywood – however, the movie sticks strictly to the facts. Karnes did, indeed, hear of the disaster and drive from Connecticut. Seeing the carnage on television, Karnes prays to God for guidance and leaves his job in Connecticut for lower Manhattan, where he ultimately finds the two men.
Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips called the film "a more limited achievement than the Paul Greengrass film ' United 93,' a slice of raw, recent American history that orchestrated its chaos to brilliant and unsettling effect."
He says, "The second major studio picture to weigh in on the events of Sept. 11, 2001, is a comfortably unsettling drama."
Gillespie says, "Comparisons with this spring's more documentary-like 'United 93' are inevitable, but misplaced. The two films share a time frame, an emotionalism and a theme – the heroism of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. That said, 'World Trade Center' takes a more dramatic approach to the material. It's like expecting 'The Longest Day' and 'Saving Private Ryan' to be similar because they're both about the Normandy invasion."
"World Trade Center" is selfless filmmaking at its best," Gillespie concludes. "Without frills or bombast or politics, it is the day the world turned upside down. Our faith in each other, Stone's movie tells us, is what helped right it again."
Phillips says, "Stone claims 'World Trade Center' is devoid of political content, and if you believe that, you will most likely buy into the whole of a film, full of good actors, destined for multiple Oscar nominations.
"If you don't believe that," Phillips says, "you may find yourself watching the film at a remove. 'United 93' put you in the middle of hell and made you think as well as feel. This one just makes you feel."
Ansen says, "'World Trade Center' celebrates the ties that bind us, the bonds that keep us going, the goodness that stands as a rebuke to the horror of that day. Perhaps, in the future, the times will call for more challenging, or polemical or subversive visions. Right now, it feels like the 9/11 movie we need."
Stone took a departure from writing his own screenplay, and used a script by newcomer Andrea Berloff. The movie is rated PG-13 for intense and emotional content, disturbing images and language. It runs 2 hours and 5 minutes.
"World Trade Center" starts Thursday at Market Square East.
