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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Children feature in engaging segments by Iran's Samira Makhmalbaf and Burkina Faso's Idrissa Ouedraogo, their innocence providing a stark contrast to the hatred and cynicism that were displayed so effectively on Sept. 11. (In Makhmalbaf's piece, a teacher in an Afghan refugee camp in Iran tries to instruct her young pupils about the events in New York, only to find that "a very important global event" to them means, "somebody dug a well, and two people fell in and died.")
The most powerful entry, and also the most experimental, is by González Iñárritu, who contrasts an almost entirely dark screen -- interrupted by brief flashes of bodies falling from the twin towers -- with a cacophonous soundtrack in which Mexican prayers for the dead mingle with radio reports and cellphone messages from Sept. 11. A sensory flashback to the confusion, incomprehension and agony of the day itself, the film is almost unbearable to watch, and impossible to forget.
Conceptually, "11'09"01" isn't revolutionary: It revives a 1960s genre, the international omnibus movie. In 1967, a director's collective that included Jean-Luc Godard, William Klein, Agnès Varda and Joris Ivens put together "Far From Vietnam," a movie in seven segments that aimed to expose conditions in wartime Vietnam (other examples include 1962's "Boccaccio '70" and 1969's "Spirits of the Dead"). But anthology movies rarely spell commercial success, and times being what they are, "11'09"01" is unusual in terms of its conception, production and creative license.
In the end, though, the most provocative thing about this film might be that it wrests the narrative of Sept. 11 away from Americans and puts it in the hands of other, far-flung observers -- the implication being that the historical event belongs, in some senses, to everyone.
Though this doesn't seem like a radical assumption, one only has to scratch the surface of American open-mindedness to see that it touches a nerve. Take, for example, the only other currently completed movie that deals with the attacks on the World Trade Center: Jim Simpson's "The Guys," which is scheduled to be released in the U.S. on Dec. 13.
"The Guys," which was adapted from Anne Nelson's hugely successful stage play of the same name, stars Sigourney Weaver as a New York journalist who helps a fire chief (Anthony LaPaglia) write eulogies after eight of his men die in the World Trade Center attacks. Both play and film show the way in which New Yorkers, with their feelings rubbed raw, formed unusual alliances in the weeks after the attacks.
Nelson's script is poignant, humorous and evocative, but not even the most generous viewer could accuse her of having an international agenda. At one point in the play, the journalist (a supposedly liberal former war reporter who worked in Latin America during the 1980s) decries the way that people all over the world are appropriating the tragedy as their own. "It's about us!" she cries.
"Americans don't want anyone to speak of their tragedies except their own," said Amos Gitai at a director's panel that took place after the screening of "11'09"01" at the Toronto Film Festival. (He added, "As an Israeli, I understand the Americans' attachment to their narrative.") There does seem to be an attitude in this country that our grief is special, our fear more justified, our right to dictate to the rest of the world more valid than anyone else's.
"11'09"01" is far from a masterpiece, but it's a film Americans should see. It's true that Sept. 11 was an event of unprecedented trauma for most Americans, and that we have stories about it no one else can tell. But by not listening to what the rest of the world has to say about it -- by ignoring the international community's criticisms of American foreign policy since 9/11, say, or shutting out the voices in a film like "11'09"01" -- Americans run the risk of isolating themselves in a cocoon of self-righteousness and arrogance. The consequences could be devastating. As Gitai put it: "I say to them, if they do this, they will fulfill the desire of their enemies, which is to create one exclusive version of everything."
