11'09''01 - September 11

Given the nature and origin of the 11 filmakers it is not surprising that this film is at best neutral in its stance towards America. Probably the most 'anti' segment comes from Ken Loach who is definitely not towing the British New Labour party line. Although those events of a year ago are shocking and painful to most Americans and most spectators who saw them unfold live through CNN etc. the majority of the writers and directors choose to show that tragedy is not an American monopoly. Should anybody be surprised that these 3000 deaths are given the same weight elsewhere as the West gives to thousands Tutsi, Tamil, Bosnian, Chilean, Kurdish (need we go on) victims. If this was a 'wake-up' call for the States then it is equally tragic that in the subsequent 12 months the Israel/Palestine impasse is further from a solution while George Bush Jnr. would rather wreak revenge than make the world a safer place. I think many of the contributors wonder where the idealism of the Founding Fathers went, and why America orignally built as a bastion of freedom, justice and tolerance now sees its self-interest paramount while the Third World wonders where the next drink, meal or bullet is coming from.

It was clear right from the beginning that 9/11 would inspire about as many films as World War II and Vietnam combined; however, there is certainly a big danger that most of these films to come are about as good (or rather: bad) as Pearl Harbor. It is a great luck that the first international release about 9/11 is not a cheesy love story starring a bunch of pretty faces, but a collective work of 11 directors from the entire world.

I'm not intending to say that all 11 episodes are great (Youssef Chahine's, for example, has a needless prologue with too many cuts and Shohei Imamura's has a really bizarre ending) or that the segments are in the right order (Imamura's, being the only one not referring directly to the Twin Towers, should open the film, not end it, Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu's should be the last one instead, as it's the most impressive one). But it is an impressing effort and an interesting portrayal of the way other parts of the world react to the collapse of the twin towers.

Consider Samira Makhmalbaf's opening segment, in which an Afghan teachers tries to explain to her pupils what happened in New York and unsuccessfully suggests a one-minute silence. Or Idrissa Ouedraogo's part (which features a bin Laden-double so much resembling the real one that you'll be shocked when you see him, I promise), in which 5 boys muse about good things that can be done with the reward put out on Laden.

There's a surprisingly good (and extremely angry) segment by Ken Loach about a man from Chile talking about what he calls "our Tuesday September 11" - that September 11 in 1973 when their elected president Allende was killed and Pinochet installed his dictatorship - with the generous help from Henry Kissinger and the CIA. This could have become a terrible effort in Anti-Americanism, but it did become a sad tale and shares my recognition for the best segment with Inarritu's (mainly sound impressions and phone calls from the hijacked planes to a black screen, sometimes a few pictures of people falling down the WTC and finally a collapsing tower, ending with the screen brightening up and one question appearing) and Amos Gitai's about a hysterical reporter trying desperatly to get on air after a car bomb exploded in Tel Aviv (hard to recognize, but this one is a masterpiece of choreography).

All these different segments (I haven't mentioned yet Claude Lelouch's about a deaf girl, Danis Tanovic's about a demonstration of the Women of Srebrenica, Mira Nair's - strange, but it takes an Indian director to make the part that is probably most appealing to Western tastes - about a Muslim family whose son is under a terrible suspicion after 9/11 and Sean Penn's with Ernest Borgnine (yes, Ernest Borgnine) as a widower leading the most depressive life one can imagine) add up to a unique film not easy to watch and hard to forget. I am sure this film will be a classic known to everyone thirty years from now. I hope it will be remembered for starting a long tradition of world cinema movies. But, alas, it's far more probable it will be remembered as a one-film-only effort. And as the one of the few 9/11 movies made by then that don't reduce this terrible event to a love story with a happy end just to please the audience.

The September 11 film is a separate but collective effort by 11 filmmakers who were given $400.000 each to make a film 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame. The formula is not new, neither are eternal flames as grave markers.

Each director was given creative license to make their film. The result is 11 viewpoints on a host of angles regarding to the suicide aircraft attack on the World Trade Center. The facts of atrocities committed in war should come as no surprise to anyone from any country. Americans are as aware of the damage of war as other nations. War is not good for anyone. When men play war with guns people are killed, innocently. The most interesting inclusion is the Israeli journalist trying to report on a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Her story gets bumped because of what's happening in New York. The story is absurd showing how powerful war and media is, and how far from peace the world is. Showing the film reveals how clever the media is in pitting nation against nation and cultivating a fake sense of patriotism. An aftermath of the film could be, don't buy into hating your brother and sister and show some compassion for all people for all injustice everywhere.

It's weird how a mass assemblage of international artists contributed to an experience that felt almost totally individual-less, like it was all part of some generic collective for what is considered "art." For the most part, the shorts felt like the same old art shorts you see on the festival circuits year after year. And why in God's name did they have Sean Penn represent the USA? He churned out what was possibly the worst segment - pointless "big budget visual bravado, with an indie sensibility" crud, with a message more heavy-handed than an afterschool special. Why didn't they get an American director who does more than ape the art world...someone with some talent and real insight...like Scorcese?

Thankfully, there were a few diamonds in the rough:

The 'Amores Perros' director's segment was VERY eerie. Images of falling bodies and phone messages from people in the building and on the airplanes. It was the only segment that thrust the reality of what happened in your face and didn't dance around the subject. Of course, because it was almost imageless, the audience got confused and restless (I guess that's what happens when art-house goers see something DIFFERENT for a change).

The Chilean docu segment was interesting, since the director showed us a September 11th that happened years ago, where Americans did similarly horrible things. And as soaked with pointless visuals at it was, I enjoyed the segment about Jerasualem getting bombed on 9/11 (and getting drowned out by the media blitz), mainly because the crowds and chaos were a nice contrast between every other short, where individuals just sat around and brooded about the towers.

But leave it to Japan to give us the finest entry. Their period-piece war parable that closed out the entire film was breathtaking and more relevant than all the films that directly involved 9/11.

So, in short, the whole movie is uneven as hell. It's worth watching for a few segments, just be prepared to suffer through a lot of generic crap.

"September 11" consists of 11 segments relating to the 9/11 attacks. The only overtly political ones are Ken Loach's, in which a Chilean man reminds Americans that September 11 is also the anniversary of the coup in Chile, and Mira Nair's, about a Pakistani-American family suspected of being terrorists. Most of the segments are basically slice-of-life stories about how people got affected by the attacks: Sean Penn's casts Ernest Borgnine as a man caring for a flower, Amos Gitai's looks at a bombing in Israel, and Samira Makhmalbaf's focuses on some Afghan schoolchildren.

The main thing that I derived from the movie is that, because of the impact that the attacks had on everyone, it was the one chance to unite the whole world. Unfortunately, we all saw what Bush did instead. It should have been a wake-up call, but it became an excuse for extreme ignorance.

Overall, this movie should prompt you to think. Bad things have always been happening, but people do what they can to go on. Is there any hope for our country?