The Great New Wonderful

The Great New Wonderful is about several groups of people all living in NY after 9/11 and running up to the first anniversary 9/11/2002. Each group has their own demons to deal with, seemingly as a result of the memories of 9/11, but the film doesn't deal directly with the event itself. You get to know the characters and how ordinary their lives are and then things get kind of wacky as the first anniversary approaches. More of a drama than a comedy, this film is technically top notch, but it is emotionally heavy, almost smothering. Perhaps it's best to stay away from films released in Sept to avoid getting beaten down by the heavy and repetitive themes of overt sadness and ptsd.

It's admirable that director Danny Leiner and screenwriter Sam Catlin have attempted to tackle the inarticulate emotional toll that 9/11 has taken on a group of New Yorkers rather than tell a more visceral story directly related to the tragedy (like Paul Greengrass' "United 93" or Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center"). Unfortunately, the filmmakers' intended cathartic exercise falls significantly short due to a too-subtle patchwork narrative and the film's relentlessly enervating pace. Five unconnected stories begin a year after 9/11, and we are taken through the characters' paces in dealing with some form of emotional denial. The most pertinent thread is initially the most comic one in which a seemingly well-adjusted office worker named Sandie talks to a sardonic psychologist, Dr. Trabulous, about the impact of the tragedy.

The other episodes are somewhat more removed from the events of that day - Avi and Satish, a couple of bickering Indian security agents overseeing the speaking engagement of a foreign diplomat; a married couple, David and Allison, whose overweight adolescent son Charlie has become socially dysfunctional; Judie, an older woman in Brooklyn quietly seething about her tedious marriage as she seeks the company of Jerry, an old schoolmate; and an upscale cake designer named Emme who is trying to land a big client at the expense of her famous rival, Safarah. None of the stories really connect with each other except for a rather contrived scene in an elevator, though that seems to be the filmmakers' point, that the scope of 9/11 affected each of their immediate situations in idiosyncratic ways. The movie only runs 87 minutes, but it takes at least an hour for the stories to take shape toward some common dramatic point. Even then, it still feels too nebulous to make a resonant emotional impact, and consequently, the opportunity for catharsis feels frittered away.

It's not for the lack of a good cast. Stand-up comic Jim Gaffigan brings out Sandie's inner torment palpably as Tony Shalhoub listens with oblique bemusement; Maggie Gyllenhaal displays the steely shallowness of Emme as she faces an unexpected turn; Naseeruddin Shah and Sharat Saxena dexterously show their characters' opposing views on life and what secrets may lie beneath; Judy Greer and Tom McCarthy bring surprising depth to a couple confounded by their son's eruptive violence; and Olympia Dukakis is stoic strength personified as Judie. Edie Falco has nothing more than a cameo as Safarah, but her moments count. New York City is captured crisply by cinematographer Harlan Bosmajian on high-definition video. The DVD has a rather informal but somewhat interesting commentary track by Leiner and Catlin, as well as several deleted scenes and unused footage of the city. An intriguing extra is the ability to watch each of the five episodes separately as individual shorts. There is also the theatrical trailer, a gallery of stills accompanied by the soundtrack, and a helpful blurb about the outreach program organized to deal with post-9/11 trauma.

The title is a comment made by Sandie (Jim Gaffigan), a patient of Dr. Trabulous (Tony Shaloub), who is trying to deal with his life's problems. It perfectly describes the feeling I had when I watched this film, which is supposed to be four stories about New Yorkers dealing with the trauma brought on by 9/11.

What trauma? Emme (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is trying to get a cake order, and her main competitor (Edie Falco) is not happy that she is the Queen of Cake at the moment.

David (Thomas McCarthy) and Allison (Judy Greer) are so distraught over their monster of a kid that they haven't had sex in 27 days.

Judy (Olympia Dukakis) has a boring life taking care of a husband that just watches TV.

Avi (Naseeruddin Shah) cheated on his wife for the first time.

Are we supposed to believe that all this came about as a result of 9/11. Give me a break! We are watching normal stories about normal lives that would go on regardless of tragedy or trauma.

The lives we see are really not that interesting.

If hysteria was the symptom of the nineteenth century and schizophrenia that of the twentieth, The Great New Wonderful, confronts the question of what symptoms will characterize the twenty-first – and what better place to look than Post 9/11 New York City? Dr. Trabulous (Tony Shalhoub) nails it when he says that he senses in patient Sandie (Jim Gaffigan) "anger" and "disappointment". These symptoms characterize the five stories that weave through the film.

In Emme's story we see a fancy cake maker (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who is trying to nab the top spot from competitor Safarah Polsky (Edie Falco). David (Thomas McCarthy) and Allison (Judy Greer) are struggling to raise a troubled, overweight, possibly violent child. Judy Hillerman (Olympia Dukakis) finds herself going through the motions in her Coney Island prison of a middle class life and in Avi's story, he (Naseeruddin Shah) and his partner face changed expectations of other people. In each anger and disappointment hold sway. The film has very subtle references to its post-9/11 setting. Avi looks up when he hears a plane pass overhead. Allison turns on the nature noises machine on the bedside table in an unsuccessful attempt to drown out the noise of sirens that fills the bedroom. And Safari Polsky, bowing under the weight of her own ambition, sighs when she says that after all that has happened nothing has changed. The tension builds throughout the film and the comedy becomes blacker as we understand the characters better and come to empathize with their symptoms.

Danny Liener, Sam Catlin and Matt Tauber do a great job weaving the stories together into a coherent whole, despite the ambiguities left in each story. The film does not attempt to answer the questions it poses, simply extracting them from what seems like a smooth exterior. Cinematographer Harlan Bosmajian does an incredible job with limited time and resources creating a fantastic looking film.

Like Salman Rushdie's book, Fury, GNW illustrates the underlying anger characterizing contemporary cosmopolitan life and the fine line that separates civilization from the bubbling up of this fury and chaos. Add the post-traumatic stress of 9/11 and you get an amazing story of society and humanity. As Rushdie writes, "But our nature is our nature and uncertainty is at the heart of what we are, uncertainty per se, in and of itself, the sense that nothing is written in stone, everything crumbles. As Marx was probably still saying out there in the junkyard of ideas, . . . all that is solid melts into air. In a public climate of such daily-trumpeted assurance, where did our fears go to hide? On what did they feed? On ourselves, perhaps . . . "

Decent, if not altogether powerful ensemble dramady is a subtle ode to the struggling inhabitants of NYC one year after 9/11, and is being released onto video five years later for the rest of the country to collectively grieve with. Though the film subtly uses the tragedy as a psychological backdrop to tell of these five eclectic character's personal dilemmas, the writer smartly abstains from any preaching of blatant and exploitive content when exploring this aftermath through his different voices, allowing for each conflict to become it's own theme. While the movie does take some time to build speed, eventually the lighthearted catharsis it was going for does spill forth, no doubt helped in part by the strong supporting cast. This is the perfect film for people who are still convinced they are too traumatized to watch anything clearly depicting September 11th, but by now feel the need to witness some sort of emotional connection, creatively, with that day.