World Trade Center
“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will got this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.�* If there’s one thing I took away from Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, it was to make every day count. I know that sounds trite or cliché, but if there’s ever been a day that has proved just how valuable each day is, and how uncertain every tomorrow is, it was September 11, 2001.
World Trade Center starts off so normal, so ordinary that the first several minutes of it might even be described as ordinary. People get up, they go through their morning routine, they get into cars and subways and ferries to go to work, they get their assignments and go about their day just as they have every other day. This ordinariness, the routine builds in the audience such a sense of dread because we know how that day turned out. However, when I think about it, the start of my day on September 11, 2001 was pretty ordinary as well, as it probably was for all of us. How could we know that it would turn into a day of unimaginable horror? We couldn’t, and hence the reason to make every day count. We can never take for granted that this day will be like every other day, a point that’s been driven home once again by terrorists who were plotting yet another attack that would have turned an ordinary day into a nightmare. This time they were foiled, in 2001, they succeeded. So again, the message is; make every day count and make sure that if this day were to be your last, you wouldn’t have any regrets. More importantly, make sure you know where you will spend eternity should this day be your last.
Oliver Stone treats the subject matter in World Trade Center with kid gloves, and I’m thankful that he did. Most of what happens happens off screen. We never see the planes hit, we only hear of the Pentagon and United flight 93 through TV and new reports. We see the collapse of the first tower from the inside, and hear the collapse of the other buried beneath the rubble with the two Port Authority Officers portrayed by Nic Cage and Michael Pena. We catch glimpses of the building crumbling again through TV news casts, but none of it is recreated with modern special effects, and why would it need to be? We have all had those images burned into our collective consciousness from that horrid. Few of us have forgotten what it looked like, so we certainly don’t need every detail recreated and portrayed on screen. However, thirty to fifty years from now, we probably will. Just as Saving Private Ryan had to recreated D-Day and the beaches of Normandy in extreme and bloody detail in order to help a new generation understand exactly what it was like, someday we will need all the details of 9/11 recreated in order for us to truly remember what that day was really like. But not now; it’s still too fresh, and fortunately Oliver Stone seemed to understand that.
Still, this is a dramatization, and unfortunately that fact is often much more apparent than in United 93, especially during the domestic scenes. Many of the scenes with the wives and family waiting to hear about their husbands come off as a bit flat, and quite honestly, these scenes often feel a lot like filler material to help the movie fill out its two-hour running time. They do have some moving moments, but the movie is really more about the two officers trapped in the rubble, and this is where the movie really shines. Stone helps capture the claustrophobic and helpless feeling of being buried in the rubble, and Cage and Pena do some talented acting, especially considering their limited movement and being covered in grime.
The one thing that really confused me is why when they two trapped man see Jesus brining them water, why is Jesus wearing a cross around his neck? I find it kind of hard to believe that Jesus would wear a representation of the device that killed him, so I’m assuming it’s there so the audience understands who this image is. But one the characters says who it is in a later scene, so in the end I just found in confusing, but I guess that really doesn’t have anything to do with the film.
World Trade Center is a moving reminder of the heroism and unity we all felt on September 11th. It’s also a stark reminder of why we should never take our loved ones, friends, or even each day we have for granted. At the end of the film, subways, ferries, and streets are empty. The ordinariness of the day was shattered by great evil, and yet in the midst of that darkness we found that humanity is also capable of great acts of self-sacrifice and unconditional love. This isn’t a great film, but I think the nearness of the event makes it so much more moving than it might otherwise have been. Those memories and emotions are still so fresh, Oliver Stone didn’t have to work too hard to make a moving reminder of way September 11, 2001 was an ordinary day that no one would ever forget.
*James 4:13-14 (NIV)
World Trade Center starts off so normal, so ordinary that the first several minutes of it might even be described as ordinary. People get up, they go through their morning routine, they get into cars and subways and ferries to go to work, they get their assignments and go about their day just as they have every other day. This ordinariness, the routine builds in the audience such a sense of dread because we know how that day turned out. However, when I think about it, the start of my day on September 11, 2001 was pretty ordinary as well, as it probably was for all of us. How could we know that it would turn into a day of unimaginable horror? We couldn’t, and hence the reason to make every day count. We can never take for granted that this day will be like every other day, a point that’s been driven home once again by terrorists who were plotting yet another attack that would have turned an ordinary day into a nightmare. This time they were foiled, in 2001, they succeeded. So again, the message is; make every day count and make sure that if this day were to be your last, you wouldn’t have any regrets. More importantly, make sure you know where you will spend eternity should this day be your last.
Oliver Stone treats the subject matter in World Trade Center with kid gloves, and I’m thankful that he did. Most of what happens happens off screen. We never see the planes hit, we only hear of the Pentagon and United flight 93 through TV and new reports. We see the collapse of the first tower from the inside, and hear the collapse of the other buried beneath the rubble with the two Port Authority Officers portrayed by Nic Cage and Michael Pena. We catch glimpses of the building crumbling again through TV news casts, but none of it is recreated with modern special effects, and why would it need to be? We have all had those images burned into our collective consciousness from that horrid. Few of us have forgotten what it looked like, so we certainly don’t need every detail recreated and portrayed on screen. However, thirty to fifty years from now, we probably will. Just as Saving Private Ryan had to recreated D-Day and the beaches of Normandy in extreme and bloody detail in order to help a new generation understand exactly what it was like, someday we will need all the details of 9/11 recreated in order for us to truly remember what that day was really like. But not now; it’s still too fresh, and fortunately Oliver Stone seemed to understand that.
Still, this is a dramatization, and unfortunately that fact is often much more apparent than in United 93, especially during the domestic scenes. Many of the scenes with the wives and family waiting to hear about their husbands come off as a bit flat, and quite honestly, these scenes often feel a lot like filler material to help the movie fill out its two-hour running time. They do have some moving moments, but the movie is really more about the two officers trapped in the rubble, and this is where the movie really shines. Stone helps capture the claustrophobic and helpless feeling of being buried in the rubble, and Cage and Pena do some talented acting, especially considering their limited movement and being covered in grime.
The one thing that really confused me is why when they two trapped man see Jesus brining them water, why is Jesus wearing a cross around his neck? I find it kind of hard to believe that Jesus would wear a representation of the device that killed him, so I’m assuming it’s there so the audience understands who this image is. But one the characters says who it is in a later scene, so in the end I just found in confusing, but I guess that really doesn’t have anything to do with the film.
World Trade Center is a moving reminder of the heroism and unity we all felt on September 11th. It’s also a stark reminder of why we should never take our loved ones, friends, or even each day we have for granted. At the end of the film, subways, ferries, and streets are empty. The ordinariness of the day was shattered by great evil, and yet in the midst of that darkness we found that humanity is also capable of great acts of self-sacrifice and unconditional love. This isn’t a great film, but I think the nearness of the event makes it so much more moving than it might otherwise have been. Those memories and emotions are still so fresh, Oliver Stone didn’t have to work too hard to make a moving reminder of way September 11, 2001 was an ordinary day that no one would ever forget.
*James 4:13-14 (NIV)
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