There are two surprises about Oliver Stone’s new film, World Trade Center. The first is that it is as restrained as it is; the second is that it has been endorsed by the Christian right in the United States.
On the subject of restraint, this is relative: a restrained movie from Stone is something like a reasonably over-the-top film from anyone else. His Alexander, for instance, made The Days of Our Lives look like Tolstoy. But, by Stone’s standards, World Trade Center is restrained. A filmmaker given to convoluted conspiracy theories and/or the emotional battery of his audience has, in this case, dumped the conspiracy theories and limited the emotional battery to the usual bounds of Hollywood-style sentimental manipulation. Expect a little girl asking prettily and pathetically, ”Is Daddy coming home?”
World Trade Center focuses on two policemen from the New York Port Authority (Nicolas Cage and Michael Peña) who, on September 11 2001, went in to help evacuate the plane-struck buildings and got trapped in the rubble as they unexpectedly collapsed. The policemen were rescued 12 hours later, a fact that enables Stone, firstly, to drag out the trauma for a very long time, and, secondly, to present us with survivors and not dead people. That makes the film triumphal and heart-warming.
But there are only two moments that feel real in this movie about events that were all too real. One is when a son accuses his mother of not caring because she’s not rushing to the attack site to see what’s happened to her husband. True or not, that’s the kind of horrid thing people can say when driven almost crazy by fear. The other moment is when a woman in a hospital, awaiting news of her missing son, cannot contain her tears; in those couple of minutes, her face says more about the trauma of 9/11 for ordinary people than the rest of the movie.
When Stone goes for meaningful in a big way, he fails. The most grandiose gesture in World Trade Center is an overhead shot of New York as the smoke and dust billow from the site, and Stone’s camera rises up way above the city — eventually reaching a satellite’s point of view. Then we’re treated to shots of people round the world hearing the news and reacting, all with stunned horror — no shots of those who danced in the streets. Given that Stone gives no other context to the 9/11 attacks, this little sequence seems odd. Mostly it reminded me of the bit in The Passion of the Christ when the camera rises up above the cross, backing up into the clouds to find what is presumably God’s viewpoint (he is apparently not omniscient as far as Mel Gibson is concerned), and then a huge tear plummets out of the sky. For a moment I thought it was an attempt at humour, then I reconsidered.
As for the American right’s endorsement of World Trade Center, this has been ascribed to the studio’s employment of publicity firm Creative Response Concepts to market the movie. This firm is practised at heading off negative publicity; it managed to convince the Christian right in the US that the recent Narnia movie had a Christian message and wasn’t more Harry Potter-style devilry. The fact that the Narnia stories are indeed Christian allegories helped, but it needed pointing out to some Christians. As far as World Trade Center is concerned, Stone helps a lot too. Imbedded in the narrative is a blatantly obvious piece of Christian-right propaganda — and it’s the most absurd part of the film.
Soon after the attacks take place, and the news is spreading across the US and the world, we see an accountant who is an ex-marine (Michael Shannon) get called by God to go to the site. One minute he’s in church, gazing up at a huge cross and telling someone he’s heard the voice of God; the next minute he’s in a barber shop having his hair cut to marine-style length. Then we see him in uniform, heading earnestly for New York. One must indeed look the part when going off to help in a disaster area.
This marine, who wants to be addressed only as Staff Sergeant, goes to the collapsed World Trade Center and, no doubt guided by God, finds the buried policemen. They are rescued; we can breathe a sigh of relief. God helped to rescue at least those two. Shame about the other 2 749. Maybe God was too busy — perhaps he was locked in an argument with Allah at the time.
At any rate, to this divinely inspired marine are given the most portentous utterances in the film. At the devastated site, swathed in smoke and dust, he pronounces: ”Looks like God made a curtain with the smoke to shield us from what we’re not ready to see.” And no sooner has he helped get the buried cops out than he’s thinking ahead: ”They’re going to need someone out there to avenge this.”
This suggests a sequel, and the next step in Stone’s revived career. How about a movie called War on Terror? The US fails to ”avenge” 9/11 by capturing or killing the leader behind the attacks or by destroying his terrorist organisation; it reduces Iraq to civil war under false pretences, alienating most of the Muslim world and spawning a whole new generation of anti-American jihadists. But two heroic American soldiers survive it all! (Perhaps one of them could be Staff Sergeant. Or he could die saving them — that would really jerk the heartstrings.) At the end of War on Terror, as in World Trade Center, our two heroes — now very dirty and bloody — can emerge from the suffering and the wreckage to a voice-over about how this trauma ”brought out the goodness” in people. Like 9/11 brought out the goodness in President George W Bush, perhaps?