11'09''01 - September 11

"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?

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.

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.

Put simply, I think this film is a masterpiece. To call it anti-American is quite arrogant and uneducated, as I feel it is, above all, extra-American, meaning it portrays an entire global community and the effect a single event in the world can have. As Americans, we are understandably still heartbroken over the tragedy and may never fully recover, but if we're smart then we need to see that an entire non-American culture exists outside our little bowl and can't be expected to react, sympathize, and contribute in the same way or in ways we'd like. If a family down the street from you loses a loved one, naturally you're going to feel bad for them, but if you never knew them you're not going to be grief stricken, and no one would expect you too. Furthermore, if you had prior resentment against that family, it would still surface and mar your ability to sympathize. Does that mean you're a bad person? Of course not. But it illustrates the relativity of the impact a tragic event can have on everyone.

For one, I thought this was best illustrated in the segments from Iran, England, Bosnia, and Burkina-Faso.

In Iran, we're introduced to children who are (summed up in the first minute of film) refugees from their home country, building brick buildings to survive potential bombings, and living in dirt. And yet they all giggle and laugh and go on as naive children. And, in all honesty, why should they be effected by September 11? Bosnia's short portrays a culture that has been under a state of perpetual grief for as long as they can remember, and they still march in defiant protest and solemn anger over the death of their loved ones. Sure, news of 9-11 effects them, but in a land this morose and unhappy it's as if they have no more grief to give. Burkina-Faso's, while funny, illustrated a good point: The children don't hunt down who they think is Bin Laden because they are angry and vengeful, they do it for the money. They are, beneath it all, capitalists, the difference being they wanted money for good cause, unlike our government who disgustingly capitalized on 9-11 for the patriotism agenda.

And, perhaps Loach's London segment was the most effective in that it was a tearful way of saying "I feel your pain...maybe you could feel ours..?" How many people (especially in my generation) really know about the horrific history of Chile, and moreso, that our government was behind it? Nowhere do I see Ken Loach saying "shame on you America!!!" (as many have interpreted), but rather I see a wounded survivor in a heartfelt request for the same empathy he has for us on September 11. I'm sure the murder of Allende means a lot more to Chileans than the WTC bombings ever will, just as WTC will always mean more to us than the murder of Allende..

I admired the Mexican segment as an auditory experience but (CURSES!) the projector broke down and the sound got out of sync, thus completely marring the effect. Egypt's segment was kind of lame in it's technique but brought up an EXTREMELY good point: We always label civilians innocent, and in many respects we are, but to a terrorist, since the U.S. and Israel are democracies, we (supposedly) elect the leaders who commit atrocities against their people. Therefore, we are not innocent. A warped perspective, yes, but a valuable insight into the mind of the enemy.

Emotionally I thought the French segment was the most brilliant, as it characterized the attitude of this whole film. Focusing on the woman's deafness we are put in her head and experience, for a brief moment, what it's like to be deaf, the same as we might experience what it's like to be foreign or non English speaking. And as an audio-visual experience it was unforgettable. Only when her boyfriend comes home does the effect of the tragedy really strike her, and it reminded me that we take our senses for granted. I would love to see an entire movie from a deaf perspective.

The two low points in this film were the American and Japanese. I admired Sean Penn's story but hated his technique. Split screens and repeat-frames are tastelessly self indulgent (key word here is indulgent) and the Japanese short, while clever and striking, felt rather out of place here. I get the "Holy War" statement but it's better suited for another film and another argument. The Indian segment, while also a touching story, was sadly unimaginative and more matter-of-fact. Israel's short, as a one-shot, was creative, but the characters were annoying and laughably exaggerated.

What this film allows is for us all to levitate above the planet and gaze down on an entire global culture and how a single event effects it. I'm sorry if Americans are offended and see this as "anti-American propaganda" but that speaks of just plain not getting it. Every nation and every culture is as guilty as we are innocent. But to believe our tragedies are superior and carry more weight sentimentally is wrong and the gross effect of isolation and nationalism. We confine ourselves inside nations and borders and collective mentalities and forget that beneath (or perhaps above) all the ideology, we're all human beings and deserve to be treated as such.

A marvelous, unforgettable film.