9/11 The Movie: Part II

Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” trailer is out. I’m sure the blogosphere is already ablaze with opinions, especially just a few weeks after “United 93” created a storm of media coverage. But here I am, throwing my two cents in.

I had no desire to see “United 93.” It looked depressing and didn’t seem to have much of a point. I’ve read most of the reviews, which praised the film for it’s balanced view of the tragic day’s events, and it’s lack of, you know, a point of view. The filmmakers’ intent seemed admirable on paper- to present an un-judgmental account of the day’s events that even refuses to vilify the terrorists- but doesn’t an art need some sort of point of view to exist? Just recreating terrible events accurately is not enough, especially less than five years after they occurred. Just what is the reason for making the film, other than to get attention? But as disinterested as I was by “United 93,” Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” looks like downright offensive.

As much as I thought that it was maybe “too soon” to make “United 93,” at least that film seemed to have the decency to strip the production of any Hollywood excess. “World Trade Center,” (at least from the trailer,) looks as slick and clichéd as the worst of Hollywood’s big budget blockbusters. With a big star like Nicolas Cage at the center of the movie, the presence of celebrity is immediately distracting. I know he’s an actor and it’s his job to make us forget he is Nicolas Cage, superstar; his job is to make us believe he is the character he’s playing. But watching the trailer, everything about his performance seems self conscious and forced, from his bizarre mustache and canned New Yawk accent. When he tells a co-star “we prepared for everything, but not for this…” the moment feels so far from reality that he might as well be talking about Godzilla. Nic Cage is a very good actor who has made some very bad choices in recent years, and I hope he comes off better in the actual film than he does in the trailer.

Disappointingly, “World Trade Center” looks more like the recent mega-flop “Poseidon” than a respectful view of a very, very recent and very, very real tragedy. The shot of the shadow of the airplane flying low over New York feels like something out of “Armageddon” or “Independence Day.” The scene where Nic Cage asks whose going to follow him into the building to lead the evacuation efforts is pure Hollywood cliché. I have no doubt that the men who risked their lives and sacrificed themselves by walking into the doomed building were scared- but do we need a moment straight out of a high school football movie to dramatize their fear? I was waiting for the lone man to start clapping, followed by a slowly building round of applause from the crowd. Worse than that is the moment when Stone shows the Towers begin to break apart- one of the most horrifying moments in recent history has been turned into the “Earthquake” attraction from the Universal Studios Backlot Tour. Everything in the trailer just feels so wrong, so canned, so clichéd, so Hollywood, so false. When the movie rolls out in August, I’m sure we’ll hear plenty of press about how the movie is meant to honor the memory of the heroes who died on that day, and celebrate the courage of the men who made it out alive. They’ll try to spin it, but in the end exploitation is exploitation. Shouldn’t we treat what could be the defining moment of our times, the unimaginable tragedy that was 9/11, as something more than a sappy movie stitched together from scenes from tons of other crappy movies?

There was so much talk on that day that what was happening “looked like a movie.” Wouldn’t a good movie about that day, if there is a good movie to be made out of it, try and show the events realistically? The images of the trailer just make the events of 9/11 look even less real than they were, and pull them even further away from reality. When the images of a movie about 9/11 could be seamlessly intercut with that of a Bruckheimer movie, there is a major problem. In our crazy, postmodern, overly-mediated world, this movie looks like it will have the opposite affect of making us remember the impact of that day- it will make it less real for us. It will make it seem like fiction in our minds, and that’s a little bit dangerous. Maybe that is Stone’s secret intent with “World Trade Center-” he is the man who made “Natural Born Killers.” That shadow shot does have a billboard for “Zoolander” prominent in the frame- is Stone just trying to be accurate to a very recent period- or is he trying to say something else? If the crazy conspiracy theorist and provocateur who made “JFK,” “Platoon,” “Nixon,” and “Wall Street” is trying to do something subversive about 9/11, then he might piss off a lot of people- but at least there would be some complicated authorial intent to it. But I suspect that’s not the case- he seems to be making a straight forward, earnest reenactment of something we really don’t need reenacted- at least not yet.

Maybe Oliver Stone really believes he needed to make this movie. Maybe he feels it will help heal us all as a nation, or bring on some sort of catharsis. But watching the trailer just gives me the creeps. Artists should be able to make whatever film they please and arguments that “United 93” and “World Trade Center” should not have been made, that the trailers should be pulled from theatres, are nothing but censorship. But when people argue that is is “too soon” for 9/11 movies, there is a point worth discussing there. But when I say it may well be “too soon” for these movies, I’m not trying to ask “as an audience, are we ready to see 9/11 as a movie yet?” The real question is “are artists ready to say anything of value about this even after only five years?” The shock of the moment has honestly barley worn off in a mere five years. We’ll need more than five years to really understand what 9/11 means in the context of history- and that is why the only movies we can currently make about it are well intentioned, earnest, and pointless attempts to recreate an event that none of us have forgotten.