World Trade Center (PG-13), directed by Oliver Stone, is now playing at Culver
Ridge 16, Pittsford Cinemas, Henrietta 18, Webster 12, Tinseltown,
Greece Ridge 12, and Eastview 13.
The fall of the towers
The release of World
Trade Centershould arouse a certain amount of controversy from the
usual sources, chiefly the shouters and crybabies of the right wing media. Oliver
Stone, one of the perennial whipping boys of that shrill and fearful crowd,
directed the movie, which deals with an event that, like the flag and the
national anthem, the conservative movement has somehow appropriated as its
special property. Since the film confronts a subject that almost all Americans (and
millions of other people around the world) witnessed practically as it was
happening, it resonates in everyone’s memory, therefore almost inevitably
inviting a great many varying and conflicting interpretations.
The astonishing destruction of the twin towers of the World
Trade Center, the terrible loss of life, the grief, and the subsequent national
and international political fallout, as we all know, also inspired a number of
foolish and irresponsible policy decisions, including the pre-emptive invasion
of a Third World country and the abrogation of rights Americans formerly took
for granted as their birthright. Despite all the historical burdens, the
contemporary cultural context, and the usual whining from the usual suspects,
however, the movie in reality avoids almost any political statement and takes
no sides. It concentrates entirely on the one of the true stories of that
incomparable tragedy.
Through the experiences of two members of the Port Authority
Police Department, John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and
Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), Stone attempts to show at
least some of the horror, the human cost, and the heroism of the events of
September 11, 2001. The director begins by showing the ordinary routine of the
two officers, intercutting their particular daily
journeys to Manhattan with countless other workers boarding subways, commuter
trains, buses, and ferries, crossing the many bridges, crowding the busy
streets of the great city, indeed the capital of the world. The montage of that
movement and the numerous shots of the skyline from many different angles
establish a complex sense of normality and apprehension, the knowledge of what
we all know is about to interrupt the normal course of history forever.
The director also shows the shock and chaos that follow the
first explosion, the confusion of both the responders — police, firefighters,
emergency medical personnel — and the media reporting the event. When McLoughlin and his team enter the buildings they still
don’t realize the cause and extent of the plane crash and cannot anticipate the
collapse of the two huge towers, which kills most of his fellow officers and
traps him and Jimeno beneath a mountain of rubble.
Most of the rest of the movie deals with the precarious
situation of the two men, immobilized, seriously injured, clinging desperately
to life. In their pain they encourage each other, voice their regrets, talk about their wives and children. The director interrupts
the static predicament with their memories, parallel scenes of their families’
anguish (including those wives whom the odious Ann Coulter cruelly maligned),
shots of the city and the world beyond the catastrophe at Ground Zero, and
finally, the work of a couple of heroic Marines who find them.
Perhaps disappointing both supporters and detractors of
Stone’s work, the movie takes no sides, mostly ignores the politicians — except
for one truly nauseating television appearance by the alleged President — and
avoids the subject of the terrorists entirely. In confining himself to the
suffering and the rescue, he also severely limits most of the possibilities in
the subject, turning World Trade Center into a repetitive, surprisingly
safe, stolid, and essentially unimaginative film.
While the picture’s look and sound attain a convincing
authenticity, capturing the procedures of the various responders who are somehow
also in tune with the rush and bustle of New York City and its denizens, it
rarely ventures beyond the predictable and sentimental in its exploration of
the tragedy itself. Whatever their origin, the people generally speak and
behave in the stereotypical and sentimental manner that the politicians and the
media confer upon them — almost nothing violates the tired strictures of
pious popular art. Given little to do beyond suffer, sob, and occasionally
scream, Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena extract as much emotion as possible from
their characters, who grow increasingly and depressingly diminished as this
ultimately disappointing movie wears on and on and on.
This article appears in Aug 16-22, 2006.
