This is not a political film

Noel Vera

"This is not a political film." That was the mantra Oliver Stone
reportedly repeated to himself while making his latest
production, "World Trade Center." The basic idea was to show what
happened on September 11, 2001, when two passenger jets hit the Twin
Towers and not long after sent them tumbling down. "The details are
the details are the details," he says, having been told in no
uncertain terms by producers Michael Shamberg and Stacy Sher (they
gave him the aforementioned mantra) to keep the paranoid conspiracy
theories ("JFK" comes to mind) to a minimum and stick to the facts.

The filmmakers stick to the facts, up to a point; they use
blueprints, computer simulations and laser-measuring technology to
recreate exactly how the buildings fell; hire Will Jimeno (one of
the two survivors) as special consultant; interviewed anyone and
everyone short of the Taliban even remotely connected to the
disaster ("It's to the point where he drives me crazy, trying to get
things right," Jimeno says about the details-obsessed Stone).

The result--well, not too bad. Stone has fashioned a "man in a hole"
story about as well as it can be told: the everyday morning that
opens just like any other morning; the elliptical indications that
something bad has happened; the numb ride to the scene of the
disaster; the frightening walk through the sub-basement, with
thousands of tons of steel and glass moaning plaintively above the
rescuers.

The collapse itself is disappointing--the digital effects don't seem
any more realistic than old-fashioned blue-screen effects were
in "Earthquake" and the Airport movies, and the film fritters away
much of the tension and mounting sense of claustrophobia by cutting
to the police officers' women biting their nails and waiting for the
bad news (Alfred Hitchcock would have spent the length of the film
down in the rubble with the survivors).

It's a nice bit of filmmaking despite my reservations, and if it
were the story of the survivors of any other kind of disaster I'd
leave it at that, but it isn't; the event turned the direction of
the United State's foreign policy completely around and led them
down the hard and stony path to Iraq, where--if President George W.
Bush has anything to do with it--they'll stay for years to come. And
you don't get a sense of any of that in the film. You don't get the
warnings given the government by intelligence groups (which the
government blithely ignored); you don't get the sheer cluelessness
of the Bush administration with regards to the world at large (and
the Middle East in particular); you don't get the plainly flatfooted
way the United States Air Force was caught unaware by a quartet of
straying planes; you definitely don't get a sense of the
threateningly militant nationalism and intense xenophobia that swept
across the country--the true legacy of 9/11. Stone says "And I think
one of the benefits of this movie is that it reminds us of what
actually happened that day, in a very realistic sense." How
realistic is it to look at the world through a peephole, seeing only
a pinpoint?

"World Trade Center," for all its good intentions and determination
to be authentic bears more than a passing resemblance to Mel
Gibson's anti-Semitic snuff flick, "The Passion of the Christ."
Stone's movie focuses on two survivors to the exclusion of all else,
ignoring the greater tragedy: the blind, unthinking anger inspired
by the event caused the government to ignore what facts were
available (Saddam Hussein had no WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction);
the evidence of the existence of such weapons was dubious at best;
Saddam had no connection whatsoever with the people responsible for
the disaster) and invade Iraq. The impression you get coming away
from the movie is that the American people (represented by Jim
McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena)) have been
buried in rubble, survived, and will ride out (presumably to Iraq)
to collect serious payback. It's as bad as focusing on the trial and
crucifixion of Christ, looking at all the hooked noses and
avaricious expressions, and arriving at the conclusion that the Jews
did it (whereas reading the whole story you'd know that 1. Christ
did his utmost to provoke and terrify the Jewish authorities, 2. The
Romans had a hand in it, and 3. It was Christ's mission to die on
the cross). This not political? It's every bit as political in what
it fails to say as Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" and even more
insidious--by presenting itself as an "apolitical drama," it has the
power to persuade and subvert the unconverted (or just plain
clueless).

It doesn't help matters that Stone decides to include the character
of Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon), an ex-Marine who seems to receive
extra-sensory vibrations (or is it just heartburn?), goes to New
York, and starts sniffing around for survivors. "I don't think you
guys realize this, but this country is at war," he declares with
ominous understatement; he looks ready to wreak Biblical vengeance
on the Sanhedrin--sorry, the Iraqis. Karnes is an actual person--
Stone adds the end title that the man served two terms in Iraq
because preview audiences were so sure he was made up--but that
doesn't excuse the blatant cartoonishness of the
character. "Someone's going to pay for this," he says, with all the
solemn seriousness of Leslie Nielsen's Lieutenant Frank Drebin in
the "Naked Gun" movies. Did Stone know just how campy his 'non-
fictional' Marine comes across? Couldn't he have pushed the camp
level--at least with this guy--up a notch or two, just to make the
satire clearer, or maybe removed the end titles attesting to the
authenticity of the character? Or is Stone--horrifying thought--dead
serious about what this particular character is saying?

Either way, the movie just cries out for a counterbalancing image to
set against Karnes, some draught of cold water or breath of fresh
air that will clear the mind of all the cow dung and start it
working properly again. Myself, I'd choose to include the videotape
footage of Bush in a classroom, listening to a schoolteacher's
story, being told in a whisper that the country is under attack;
President George W. Bush, he of few scruples and even less brains,
just sitting there, unwilling--or unable--to cope with what's
happening.


(First published in Businessworld, 10/20/06)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)