World Trade Center - 2006 - Film

Wednesday, August 9, 2006 (opening day)

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers are a tough subject for a Hollywood picture to tackle. There are two ways a filmmaker can approach this event: First, by retelling it, minute by minute with all historical facts intact; or second, by examining the historical facts and creating a frame of reference within which to understand it. Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, which opened today, falls into the former category, neglecting the five years of emotional and historical distance we have from the event. It's told from the perspective of the two Port Authority police officers, John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), who were trapped beneath the Trade Center's rubble, and were among the mere twenty people pulled out alive from the disaster site. Based on the true events of these two officers' experiences, the film is meant to work as an homage to their service and subsequent suffering, as they lay paralyzed beneath innumerable tons of shredded steel and concrete.

The opening act of WTC is the city coming to life. It is a time lapse from the moment the officers rise from bed until they are called to the terrorized scene downtown. The streets and landmarks are familiar; the sun filters through the screen of silhouetted buildings; webs of wires that outline the Brooklyn Bridge, the studded steel of the Williamsburg Bridge; a soft flow of traffic trickles through the abandoned streets at dawn into the honking horns of gridlock in the bright morning sun. New York is peaceful, perhaps more than it has ever appeared on film. The city wakes into consciousness with calmness and grace.

The beauty of the morning is interrupted by the infamous historical event we all know by heart. A shadow of the first airliner blips across the sunny face of a midtown building. We know what happens. The event that is five years in our memory is slowly pulled out of us with a thin string of emotion. Tears that we forgot slowly build behind our eyes. Knots in our stomach, strangled throat, clenched teeth; it's happening again. We walk through it shot by shot, aware of our devastation, of our destiny. This time we have an inside view from that of the two officers. You might expect it to move faster, to hear more screams or fights out of panic. But the officers and their squad push slowly and methodically through the Trade Center lobby, and it's difficult to watch because we know within minutes that building is coming down. Maybe they didn't imagine it could collapse. Communication among emergency crews and the media was sparse; the officers had no warning; their fate was sealed and they did not know it. This is our story.

What happens in the latter portion of the film dilutes the intensity and meaning of what preceded in the former. The remains of our frayed emotions after the first overwhelming minutes of the movie are meant to be directed towards the two trapped policemen. The problem is that there is no forward-moving dialogue to help us grieve, and then reflect on the men's actions with a historical eye. The men are trapped, and like them we watch with no changing angle or perspective of history. Excepting the opening act, the impact of the attacks is told to mean the same thing now as it did five years ago, but time did not stand still. We are in an incremental process of understanding what happened that day; the frame around 9/11's dizzying events is still under construction, and progress in coherently telling its story has been made. Conversation and deconstruction of the events have happened.

The Trade Center site is now free of debris, but WTC's image of it is not. As a historical picture, the movie's purpose, then, is thin; the two brave officers who almost died that day are acknowledged so that the audience is aware of their existence and service, but no more. With five years of reflection and time passed Oliver Stone's picture is not a fraction as brave as the two officers whose stories it depicts in its refusal to help conceptualize the event beyond the thin outline of a first-response news report. By virtue of the story's of-the-moment setting it could be argued that the film is not at fault for neglecting to incorporate historical perspective. The fact remains, however, that this film is a product of the time beyond 9/11 and must inherently references that time passed to avoid regressive sentimentality. The concluding barbeque scene, where the surviving officers and their rescuers are reunited, takes place three years after the attacks. The sun is high in the sky, kids are playing, and everyone is happy; a bond among these people has been forged. But there is no silver lining to this storm cloud. 9/11 did not have to happen for these parties to find happiness.

There is a concentrate of emotion that defines the heart of 9/11, and it lies in those initial moments of its occurrence. We should not forget the painful details of that day, but we should also expect to grieve and progress to a point of better understanding it. Unfortunately, for all of World Trade Center's heart, it refuses to help us heal.