(Untitled)
I just watched the trailer for World Trade Center. I shouldn't have. I really shouldn't have but I had to know. It was absolutely deplorable. From the music to the cinematrography to the acting it is a heinous crime. How anyone can be a part of this film is incomrephensible to me. That this trailer is going to be played in cimenas, Gd forbid it
( Read more... )
People have the right to express themselves artistically however they wish. This is how people come to terms with tragedy, with something that seems too large to possibly wrap their heads around. Making a movie is an attempt to grapple with the event and reach some sort of understanding about one of the most horrific days in most of our lives. Would you call writers who address 9/11 evil, too? How about poets? How about painters? How about Art Spiegelman and his "In The Shadow of No Towers" comic? Are filmmakers and actors different because our culture produces a lot of dumb movies that people watch purely for entertainment?
And are we to deny viewers the right to watch a movie like World Trade Center? Just as artists use their art to try and understand things, many people turn to art to help them make sense of a nonsensical world. Why is September 11th an exception? Some people will watch the movie and feel better. Yes, some will also watch it and feel worse, but art is also meant to challenge people to look at things they'd rather not see. Good art forces people to see clearly, for better or for worse.
Perhaps it is too soon for some sort of definitive statement on the World Trade Center attacks; perhaps, as you suggest, we will never be able to sum that day up with a couple hours of film. To be honest, I think that's probably the case. However, just because one can't make a definitive statement doesn't mean one shouldn't be allowed to make any statement at all. Maybe World Trade Center will be shit. It's possible that the movie really is just greedy executives trying to milk September 11th for all the money they can get. I just don't think it's right to say that making or watching a 9/11 movie is fundamentally wrong.
(As an aside, I think it's unfair to fault World Trade Center for turning tragedy into a sound bite. The age of sound bites began a long time ago, and television news ensured that the World Trade Center attacks became sound bites almost immediately after they occured. If you want to talk about exploitation start there or start with our government's actions, not with some silly movie.)
Reply
My problem with this film is that, when watching that trailer, I see all of those little cinematographic (forgive me if that is not a word) tricks used in disaster films to hook the audience in and make them cry. The tagline says the picture is about courage and survival. There is nothing within the trailer to show that excpet perhaps for the last few seconds when one man asks the other if he can still see the light. I know that to show anything more of them being rescued would give away the film (but we already all know the ending). That the trailer spent most of its time showing people in bed with their wives the night before and then looking horrified and then getting crushed beneath debris doesn't seem like it intends to be a story of survival. Were the people who went in hereos? Of course. But the trailer..it looks so damndably prepackaged.
To tell you the truth,I don't know what I was expecting with this film or its trailer. I already had doubt when Oliver Stone said, in response to whether or not America is ready, "it's not in the business of knowing whether America is ready". Yes, I know that it isn't his job but when it comes to such sensitive material I think more of an effort should have been made on his part or the part of the people producing this film.
The thing about art and books and poetry is that, if you want to, you can avoid them. But when this movie is released, I am almost positive, it is going to be everywhere. The press it has already gotten makes it inavoidable to a degree. And for those people who don't want to hear mention of a movie depicitng "how it really was" (to the best of the director/film crew's ability) it's not fair.
I don't think that making the film is wrong. I think the way they are going about publicizing it (through the trailer and the media) makes me incredibly nervous.
I'm not sure what it is exactly that I'm trying to get at with all of this. I just don't think it's right to thurst this back into people's faces buried within the summer movie setting. There are more tasteful approaches. Much better than Nicolas Cage saying "we weren't prepared for this" while looking horrified.
Reply
Leave a comment