11'09''01: Onze minutes, neuf secondes, un cadre

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.

I couldn't help but watch this film from the perspective as an objective alien viewing a 2-hour feature about Earthlings. To judge this film by its individual merits or failures is like trying to understand the people of this planet by isolating them geographically and culturally. When I see how little so many reviewers here at IMDb don't get that, it is no small wonder to me why we as a species can't get along.

Each eleven-minute film here offers us a hint of what we are as a species. We see how children thousands of miles away have no greater concept of American culture than American children (as well as adults) have of theirs. That's a dangerous thing, especially when it is evident that the reflexive acquiescence of God's will is summoned so easily in order to explain ignorance away. The events of 9.11 scale down personal tragedies, such as deafness and failed relationships, while giving legitimate perspective of true human suffering, such as those who have been caught in the cycle of violence in Bosnia and Chile. Personal bitterness, such as a soft-news TV journalist being beaten out of a hard-news story, clashes with poverty-stricken children who shrug off an opportunity for overwhelming fortune and immeasurable fame when they realize that they can at least secure the cost of education and medicine for the near future. What happens when one tries to keep score of human suffering? The futility of that question is answered profoundly in a segment revolving around an American soldier and Palestinian terrorist - or an American terrorist and Palestinian soldier, or two soldiers or two terrorists, all depending on which flag you happen to be waving. It all sums up to countless numbers of ghosts and grieving mothers. And the cacophony of all that gets summed up in a segment featuring voices of every human emotion on 9.11, along with visions that defy any conventional understanding of terror. It isn't the numbers that stagger us, but one lonesome figure flinging himself into certain death. The question is: if we can relate so strongly to that figure, why is it so difficult for us to relate to the dying mother in Burkina Faso, or the torture victim from Chile, or the leg-less man in Bosnia, or the Muslim-American woman whose son is condemned as guilty until proven innocent, or the lonely old man who we usually tend to look away from on the street? Why are so few Americans only able to see the terrorist attacks on 9.11 as an American tragedy and not as an extension of human tragedy that is continuously being recycled? Until people of all nations can share in each other's suffering, we will always be doomed.

The film '9.11' is capped off with a segment which one can accept as an allegory that man's need for righteous indignation and violence is as much a part of his nature as killing is for a snake. The snake gets the last word in though, that there is no such thing as a holy war. Snake smarter than man, eh? I can't say that any of these individual films were great. Some, like that last segment was too clever for its own good, and some made me wish that the filmmaker made better use of his or her eleven minutes. But taken in whole, it is an astoundingly effective experience. I've always wished that a project covering short films from all over the world could be shot in one day- illustrating us in all of our similarities and differences. Using 9.11 as a starting off point is ingenious, since our personal and political tragedies are what brings us together when we're at our best, and what keeps us apart when we are at our worst. To fault this film for any artistic shortcomings is fair ground, but to fault it for its personal and political leanings is to add insult to injury. This film is a wake-up call to see the pain that is all around us and to respond with something other than finger-pointing and jingoistic pride. It's shown us the past and the present and given us the opportunity to reflect on a more promising future, if we so chose.

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.

French production in which leading film directors from 11 countries were invited to create 11-minute short films conveying their reflections on the events of September 11.

The film segments vary widely in content and quality. Two allude to U.S. complicity in terrorist acts (in Chile against Allende, who died on September 11, 1973, depicted in the segment by British director Ken Loach; and in Palestine by U.S.-backed Israelis, shown in the segment from Egyptian director Youssef Chahine). Two more recall other destructive acts (a Palestinian suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, shot by Israeli director Amos Gitan; the Japanese "holy war" against the west in WW II, by Shohei Imamura).

Ironies abound in several stories. Shadows that darken the New York City apartment of a grieving old man suddenly disappear as the World Trade towers telescope to the ground in Sean Penn's piece, bringing the man momentary joy. But in this bright light he can finally see that his wife is really gone. In Mira Nair's film, based on a real incident, a missing young man, also in New York City, the son of a Pakistani family, is first presumed to be a fugitive terrorist, but later he proves to a hero who sacrificed himself trying to save others in the towers.

There are poignant moments dotted throughout. Loach has his exiled Chilean man quote St. Augustine, to the effect that hope is built of anger and courage: anger at the way things are, courage to change them. Imamura tells us that there is no such thing as a holy war. Samira Makhmalbaf shows a teacher with her very young Afghan schoolchildren, exiled in Iran, trying to tell them about the events that have just transpired in New York. But they are understandably more impressed with a major event in their refugee camp, where two men have fallen into a deep well, one killed, the other sustaining a broken leg. This is comprehensible tragedy on a grand scale for the 6 year olds.

Idrissa Ouedraogo, from Burkina Faso, creates a drama in which the son of an ailing woman spots Osama bin Laden in their village and gathers his buddies to help capture the fugitive terrorist, in order to get the $25 million U. S. reward. He tells his friends not to let any of the adults know their plans, for the older folks would merely waste the money on cars and cigarettes, while he plans to help his mother and others who are sick and destitute.

It is Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (maker of "Amores Perros") who provides by far the most powerful and chilling segment, one that, for the most part, shows only a darkened screen with audio tape loops of chanting and voices and occasional thudding sounds. Brief visual flashes gradually permit us to see bodies falling from the high floors of the towers, and it dawns on us that the thuds are these bodies hitting the ground. The sequence ends with elegiac orchestral music and a still shot, bearing a phrase first shown only in Arabic, then with a translation added: "Does God's light guide us or blind us?" (In various languages with English subtitles) Grade: 8/10 (B+). (Seen on 10/31/04). If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.