Two years ago this October, my New Jersey hometown featured a shrine to family and friends lost in the Sept. 11 attacks. Come Christmas, the only physical reminders remaining were dribbles of candle wax and a lopsided skyline. We didn't forget, but we had to move on.
Tragedy stops time momentarily, but time and physical distance tend to smooth catastrophe into a more orderly procession of events. If two years later the events of Sept. 11 seem surreal, they've retrospectively altered our understanding of history, of ourselves and of our place in the world. This was the rationale behind 11'09'01, a French film created in response to the attacks.
Eleven directors from eleven countries were given eleven minutes and nine seconds of film and absolute freedom for a personal interpretation of the September 11 attacks. What emerged was neither a tribute to the missing, nor a commemoration of the events, nor a celebration of hope. Rather, it is an attempt to square the events historically and geographically as part of the global conscious.
One British film reminds us of another Sept. 11: the day the infamous General Pinochet, with covert CIA support, ousted Salvador Allende's elected Popular Unity government. Israeli director Amos Gitai's segment juxtaposes the events with terrorist bombings in Jerusalem, and Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu, representing Mexico, flashes images of plummeting bodies to a soundtrack of screams and emergency phone calls. Sean Penn represents the United States, offering the story of a grieving widower with an inausipicous window on New York.
Distributors were hard-pressed to find American theaters interested in screening the film. The Carolina Theatre's screening of 11'09'01, as part of the theater's "Just Here" summer series, is only the film's second major screening nationwide. "We didn't anticipate this to be a big blockbuster," explains director of programming Jim Carl. "It's going to be a hard sell." As indeed it has been: I saw this film alone in a deserted theater.
It's a disturbing film. Any attempt to downplay the tragedy hits, literally, very close to home, and the film has been criticized for manipulating tragedy as an artistic medium. At the same time, it's intended as an eye-opener for those who, indulging in self-righteous indignation, find themselves oblivious to the suffering of others.
The events of Sept. 11 had causes and consequences that we're reluctant to accept. It's a bland conclusion, but the only safe one I can find. As a film intended to represent global discord, it exists as an incongruous mélange of disparate viewpoints; sometimes confusing, but always emotional.
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