Reviews
11’09”01 – September 11 | Review
The Day that Changed America
Some hits and some misfires in collection of auteur pieces.
Eleven filmmaker voices with names such as Loach, Lelouch, Gonzalez Inarritu offer their eleven minute treatments inspired by a tragedy which pales in comparison to plenty of other nation’s violent crimes. If you ever wonder how the rest of the world felt about 9/11, then this eleven-episode film of shorts offers a wide-range of auteuristic interpretations from artistic viewpoints and like all of cinema not all films are necessarily worthy demonstrating that some films stand out for a reason while others just stand out.
The most chilling piece and most controversial number is Mexico’s Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s segment which is an audio experiment with flashes of horrifying home-video footage. With elevations in the decibels-levels he literally brings the viewer to visit every state of confusion in the minutes before, during and after the fall of the Two Towers. With a black screen as his canvas he inserts some borderline cheap brutal images of victims falling to their deaths which is mixed with the variety of sounds that came from this event, the final phone calls to answering machines placed by loved ones who are about to die which rattles the viewer in their seats. Ken Loach’s piece about the first 9/11 in 1973 in Chile is this beautiful and perhaps educational open letter, a text to everyone in the states who seem to forget that their government is responsible for one too many coup-d’etats thus resulting in other nation’s heavy body counts. The film that rises above all is film’s first piece which resembles her other fine piece of work with At Five in the Afternoon/i>. Iran’s Samira Makhmalbaf piece shows how a class room of young minds talking about God’s will suddenly takes a step outside for a picture that spells out a thousand words.
France’s Claude Lelouch opts for an interesting audio experience giving us the world of a death person inside a relationship which is held together by a piece of string which is then reflected in the fragile state in which humanity find itself at times. Egypt’s Yousef Chahine piece is a bizarre 8 ½-like experience showing that a film director and his imaginary friends ponder issues that are clearly in the line of anti-American sentiments. Danis Tanovic continues to voice the after-effects of the former Yugoslavia as witnessed in his poetic farce No Man’s Land. Here he looks at the windowed women of slaughtered victims. Idrissa Ouedraogo pieces might be a little rough on the sides but as the film’s only humorous piece it provides a good break from the pounding issues with a tale about a group of boys trying to capture Osama and the 25 million dollar reward. Israel’s Amos Gitai tries for a feverish tale that looks like a bad high-school play which depicts a re-enactment of a suicide bombing’s aftermath in a one location shoot which is perhaps one of the films least effective segments. India’s Mira Nair piece touches upon the fueled racism that followed the events, it acts as a strong dramatic piece which shows the sourness and stupidity of the New York people. The most absurd piece comes from Sean Penn who attempts to give us some artistic redemption of a whacked out widower who represents the mentally sick and perhaps those of lived within proximity to the site. The final segment is perhaps the weirdest tale by Japan’s Shohei Imamura with the story of a Japanese soldier who has returned from war and has decided to live like a snake?
Thankfully 11’09”01 – September 11 does not act like some kind of Band-Aid, instead it drives plenty of messages that say that the destruction and deaths in New York were tragic but forgetting about past violent histories and living in this me, myself and I world is even more dangerous. This film feels at times gives anti-American impression but this perhaps explains that when a government decides to police the world then Americans should not be surprised by the resentment when they go abroad and get the impression that they are not welcomed. This collection has some poignant numbers and the concept alone goes beyond classroom discussion material.
Rating 2.5 stars
