By Jason O'Brien jaobrien@charter.net
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Never one to shy away from a challenge, Oliver Stone decided to direct the second major feature film to deal directly with the tragedy of September 11, 2001 with World Trade Center, an incredibly ambitious project which for the first time in a major feature film showed us the 9/11 terrorist attacks from inside the towers from the perspective of the people on the ground, and in the process, he created a film of incredible heroism that all came from one of the too rare amazing true stories of survival to come out of that dark day. The first thing one notices when you watch this film is that if you didn't know that this was an Oliver Stone film going in, you wouldn't know it when you came out. Realizing the sensitivity of this material and the inherent drama already present in the story, Stone wisely realized that his usual visual flourishes and over-the-top style were not needed for this film, and would have in fact distracted from what Stone was trying to do. This film for me was actually a step back to the Stone from the days of Platoon, and Stone himself said that for him this film is more in that style, trying to tell a heartbreaking story of human suffering in such a huge context or backdrop (Vietnam vs. the 9/11 tragedy), but to do so from the ground level, from how the people experienced it, that "grunt's eye view" that was talked about so much in Platoon. And that's exactly what Stone has done here ... we only experience in the film what the men on the ground saw that day, in this case, two New York Port Authority policemen who went into the towers to try to rescue people and instead barely escaped death when they became trapped when the towers collapsed. That's one of the most brilliant choices Stone made, and also one that took a little getting used to, to be honest. On the one hand, I'm used to the Oliver Stone who floods the viewer with details and imagery, and I have to admit there was a part of me that wanted a more detailed portrait of what happened on 9/11 when I went in to this movie. But what I realized by the end of the film is that Stone was not trying to present a comprehensive portrait of what happened that day, but instead to focus on just one of the multitudes of stories that day, and in this case, one of the rare happy endings from a day that sure didn't have a lot of happiness associated with it. I didn't feel totally immersed back in the madness and fear I remember from 9/11 with this film, as I did watching Paul Greengrass's film from earlier in 2006, United 93, where the whole day unfolded in such documentary detail as to put me right back to that day. But that's not a criticism of this film, it's just a different experience. I'll admit that my heart was pounding in the opening moments of this film, and for some brief moments, it was heart-wrenching to watch these men go into the towers, confused about what was going on, and know that those towers will soon be coming down on them.
What's fascinating about watching this film is trying to distance yourself from watching it as a movie. Because everything in this film is based on fact, you tend to ignore the usual film conventions which would have made this film incredibly cliched if it had all been made up. Particularly when a dedicated Marine who finds himself so troubled and moved to action by the terrorist attacks, dons his uniform and makes his way through police lines and plays a key role in helping to find the two officers in the rubble that this story is centered on. Ever since the attacks of 9/11, I have read a number of accounts of what happened inside the Twin Towers, but honestly had not heard a lot about the story of John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), who ended up being two of only 20 people who were rescued alive from the rubble of the World Trade Center from among the almost 2800 people who lost their lives that day. Michael Pena and particularly Nicolas Cage give two amazing performances, particularly when they are pinned down by rubble, and only have their voices and their ashen-colored faces to deliver a performance, and Cage is definitely a revelation here, dialing down his usual over-the-top persona for his best performance since Leaving Las Vegas. One Stone touch not lost with this film is his meticulous attention to detail, recreating the rubble of the World Trade Center exactly as we remember it, and the streets of New York as we remember it from that day. The visual effects are all first rate, to present the sight of the burning towers with the hole from the plane in it, to make you believe this film was actually being shot that day for how realistic all those scenes looked. At the end of the film, when Will and John are finally carried out on stretchers by a lined up crowd of rescue workers (many of whom were the actual ones who were there that day), it's such an emotionally powerful scene that something good did come out of 9/11, and for me, harkened back so much to the end of Platoon, when Charlie Sheen was being taken to a helicopter on a stretcher, finally escaping the hell of the Vietnam War. We hadn't really experienced the Vietnam War from the inside and on the ground like we did until Oliver Stone brought us through it with that film, and in much the same way, for those of us who could never what it felt like to be in New York City and in the World Trade Center that day, this film brings every element of that day to give us that experience as well, and I could almost hear Charlie Sheen's final words in Platoon echoing for those who survived and had to tend to a world that would never be the same after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: "Those of us who did make it, have an obligation to build again, to teach to others what we know, and to try with what's left of our lives to find a goodness and meaning to this life." And that is such the theme of World Trade Center, finding the goodness and meaning in a day that showed such unspeakable evil that some human beings can perpetrate, to discover the stronger and more noble acts of heroism that showed what we as human beings could be truly proud of. And this film is just such a film to be proud of ... a first rate effort by a director not afraid to challenge himself and to continue to thrust into stories of immense power with the same skill he's had all along.
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That's why Stone doesn't show us the two planes crashing into the World Trade Center, or even the sight of the towers falling from the outside (although we do see it on news coverage from the day). If these officers didn't see it on 9/11, we don't see it either. Which actually works to the film's benefit ... we all have those images of the planes striking the buildings implanted in our minds, and it becomes more haunting anyway to experience the same confusion they had about what happened, even so much to where once they are buried in the rubble, they still don't know until they are lifted out that the towers completely collapsed. So for me, that was the first brilliant choice Stone made with this film. Secondly, of course once news came out that Oliver Stone would be directing a film about 9/11, the first things most people thought was that "oh great, here comes Oliver with another conspiracy film" and was criticized before it was even released. Oliver proved his critics really wrong when he left politics COMPLETELY out of this film, just the same way Greengrass did with United 93. Stone didn't need to include any politics in this film, and I'm glad he showed that a filmmaker approaches each film with a new set of eyes, and what works for one film doesn't always work for another film ... each film is different. I mean, I could still very well see Stone someday approaching the multitudes of political issues associated with 9/11, but right now, as filmmakers take the first tender steps toward presenting that tragic day on film, I think it's best to simply focus on the stories of that day, as a lot of the emotions are still very raw for people, and it's obviously still a very tender wound for all of us alive who remembers every single vivid detail of a day of tragedy unlike any other we have known in recent times. Like I said in the beginning, it's a much different Oliver Stone than we're used to seeing operate behind the controls of this film, but to the eyes of a fellow filmmaker, it's not surprising at all.
The film begins with the quiet calm of what was a typical beautiful day in New York City. We follow these two men with their morning routines, until they come together for their normal day of work. All of a sudden, the shadow of a plane strikes across one of the buildings, and the day of national tragedy begins. Seeing the tower collapse from the INSIDE of the buildings was one of the most wrenching things to experience in any recent film, and to hear the sound of that from the inside is a masterpiece of cinematic melding of visuals and sound. Once the two become trapped, Stone keeps us trapped in that claustrophobic and harrowing environment, where further collapses happen and just like the officers trapped, we don't always know what's going on outside. The story then begins to tell two other intersecting storylines ... we continually come back to John and Will, and how they tried to keep talking and not fall asleep to keep themselves alive, as they fought through desperation and pain to stay alive by talking about a great deal of things. Stone then also follows the struggles of these two men's families, particularly their wives, played very well by Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal, two of our most incredibly talented actresses. And then of course, we follow the storyline of the rescuers, who risked their own lives to traverse the twisted steel and choking smoke in the blind hope to find survivors amongst the devestation. Stone forces us to remember the kind of human bonding and heroism that we saw displayed that day, and reminds us that unfortunately, just five years after the tragedies, we've found ourselves drifting away from how we felt in those days afterward. And that's why I feel it's not too soon for filmmakers to start tackling 9/11 ... these stories deserve to be presented on film, and I'm so glad to see a first rate director like Stone taking on the challenge with a master's touch.