9/11 and the limits of film

Another September Eleventh has come and gone, the fifth since the United States was attacked. But unlike the first four anniversaries, we were assisted this time in our observance by two motion pictures, one cable movie, and a mini-series; all released within the last six months. The initial response to this sudden glut of 9/11 thrillers is to assume a motive of cynical greed in the filmmakers, that these four productions (And the doubtless others just around the corner) were made simply to profit off of a recent tragedy. But while filling their coffers was certainly included in the agenda, I don’t think this is the sole motivation. Realistically, if one were looking to make a fast buck in Hollywood today, the safest bet would be to license a comic book hero, digitally animate animals or household objects…or put a black man in a dress. These are the movies-with the breakfast cereal and fast food promotions- that fill producers’ swimming pools with cocaine and nubile teenaged girls. The motion picture industry has always been risk-adverse in its’ choices, and it’s surprising that anyone would have green-lighted any project that so openly invited the public’s (righteous) anger and disgust. No, what’s driving these movies isn’t greed, but a far worse human failing: egotistical self-importance.

It is not unheard of for artists to respond with immediacy to the events around them, translating communal horror into personal statement. As his native Spain was drowning in civil war, Picasso answered with the twisted, tortured forms of his “Guernica”. While interned in a German prison camp at the beginning of the second World War, Olivier Messiaen composed his “Quartet For The End Of Time”. Freshly liberated from Auschwitz, the Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski sat down and wrote his masterpiece, “This Way For The Gas, Ladies And Gentlemen”, an unrelentingly bleak account of just how quickly people can adjust to the inhuman torture and murder of others (the author then made his point about the disposability of life by promptly ending his own). There is a great tradition of artists responding to the events around them, offering their voices as a vital dissent from the generals, politicians and academics. The question is, then, when did big-budget Hollywood movies become the canvasses of art?

We are a nation at war. It is immaterial to the issue of 9/11 movies whether that war started in 2001 or in 1948. It also doesn’t matter when discussing this whether the war in Iraq, where we are investing the bulk or our resources and attention, is a valid response to the attack, or if it’s Cambodia-style sideshow unnecessarily complicating our struggle to keep our nation safe. What does matter, is that we are actively engaged in fighting a foreign enemy committed to causing as many American deaths as possible. As such, any motion picture dealing with the events that led to this situation (or alerted us to it, depending on your political fancy) cannot be anything but propaganda for this war effort, automatically excluding them from consideration as art. Setting aside the absurd ABC mini-series, which had as it’s main goal the laying of all blame on the Clinton administration (because he was bogged down in the Lewinski business…no mention though of the lunatic right-wing fringe that had forced the issue down America’s throat as part of it’s eight year campaign to ruin the presidency), there is no way these films can be watched without raising the audience’s blood lust for revenge. Oliver Stone may talk a big game, mumbling vague recollections of a film school memories of “The Battle Of Algiers” (1966), but his current “World Trade Center” owes more to the World War Two movies Ronald Reagan and John Wayne used to make. Hollywood’s contribution to the war effort, with clockwork, herky-jerky Germans and simian Japanese, these movies were made expressly with the purpose of reminding the audience of the enemy’s inhumanity and ‘our boys’ brave sacrifices. Watching the hero (or at least his best friend, played as ever by a loyal Reagan) give his life to slow the life-destroying Niponesse or Teutonic tide threatening our shores. The dead hero returns at the end, beaming down from the clouds with pride over a life well-sacrificed, his Christlike benevolence counter pointed by the large legend demanding we “buy war bonds”.
Can we really expect Hollywood to handle the New York firefighters or the passengers of flight 93 with anything resembling tack or understatement? This is the same motion picture industry that handles the “unlikely athlete succeeds against the odds” formula as though it’s the Greatest Story Ever Told. Oliver Stone, to make the heroism even more nakedly obvious, casts Nicolas Cage as one of his trapped firefighters, an actor less capable of delivering a subtle performance than Adam Sandler after drinking three Red Bulls. It’s certainly a humbling thing to know those people on flight 93 had the courage, the balls, to overtake the terrorists and crash the plane rather than allow it to be used as another weapon…but does that give us the right to convert this act into an hour and a half entertainment? Not once, but twice now this story has been rendered for mass consumption, under the rationale of paying tribute to their sacrifice. The makers of these films seem to think their public so lack imagination that we’re incapable of grasping these events without their guidance, without seeing well-paid actors running around a set pretending to overtake other actors, these in turbans and covered with bronzer. This is both what I suspect is the true motive behind this glut of 9/11 movies, and also what I find most galling about them; that without their help, without them showing us with exacting detail what exactly happened, we’re too stupid and dull to grasp the enormity of what took place. Suffering the hubris of self-importance, they scratch their names into the base of the monument of Remembrance, casting themselves as the official transcribers of our time.
Aside from their lack of taste or sensitivity, aside from their reflections of their creators’ misguided sense of artistry, aside from their potentially damaging effects on the political climate, what makes these deserving of our dismissal is their overwhelming sense of laziness. There is nothing more lazy, more creatively bankrupt than telling a story your audience already has an emotional attachment to. Excluding the Amish, it’s hard to believe there are many Americans who do not have vivid memories relating to that day, or many Americans who did not experience some sort of emotion watching three thousand of their fellow citizens burning, falling or being crushed to death. What a cheap short-cut to audience response it is then to tap into those recent feelings, to simply turn on the camera and film specific cues to trigger that response. The fact is, a 9/11 movie doesn’t have to be good in the conventional sense of film making, all it has to provide is a canvass on which the audience can write their own feelings. I could make the sloppiest, most boring movie imaginable about the falling of the World Trade Center, but as long as I include certain reminders of that day, I will be guaranteed an audience moved to tears by their recent memories. This is not art, this is pornography, and lousy pornography at that. Consider: Oliver Stone chose to include in his movie the office works that jumped to their deaths rather than suffer the torture of fire. As his well-fed actors approach the towers in their firefighter costumes, digitally generated bodies rain down from the sky, followed by post-production inclusion of the wet thud as they strike the pavement. As much as we want to laugh at the image of Nicolas Cage’s vein attempts to express horror or fear at what’s supposed to be happening on the green screen he’s flailing in front of, we are reminded of the very real, very not Hollywood magic of watching that really happen five years ago. Once, those weren’t rubber bodies being tossed around a set by Teamsters, once, they weren’t pixels arranged by computer nerds…once, those were real people jumping to their deaths before your eyes. And whatever emotion you experience remembering that sight, Oliver Stone and his ilk believe they have provided.
To end on a final cheap shot: obviously Oliver Stone is an uneven, over-blown hack, whose contributions to the American film canon include such vital works as “Alexander” and “Natural Born Killers”, speaks volumes about who is telling our stories. Cyrus Nowrasteh, the author of “Path To 9/11”, spent the 1980’s honing his craft as head writer on the television series “Falcon Crest”. Even more impressive, Peter Markle, nominated for an Emmy for his direction of “Flight 93”, has a wide and diverse list of directing credits, including tv shows like “CSI”, “Las Vegas”, and “Jack And Bobby”. But least you think him limited to the small screen, the versatile Mr. Markle has directed numerous major motion pictures, including the posthumous John Candy vehicle “Wagons East” (tagline: “they came, the saw, they changed their minds). He also brought to the screen-and our hearts- that singular work of vision, “Hot Dog…The Movie” (two taglines: “taste the sauce in…Hot Dog The Movie”, plus “there’s more to do in the snow than ski”).