By Keith Uhlich
There's not so much an Oliver Stone shot as there is an Oliver Stone rhythm, and if we're to pinpoint an exact reason for World Trade Center's ultimate failure, this is the doorstep at which to lay the blame. Stone's film hinges upon a hollow extended conversation, rendered via a poorly visualized series of chiaroscuro close-ups, between Port Authority police officers John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Peña) as they lie trapped beneath the rubble of the fallen Twin Towers. To say that the close-up is not Stone's forte is an understatement, but he's gotten away with it in the past because his films, whatever their flaws, moved: with purpose, if not always with precision. Stone's talents (and his occasional profundity) lie in juxtaposition and bombast, in a breathless, ragged montage. His depthless canvases are prime examples of "what you see is what you get," and though this results in a fair share of ideological bullshit it is also, more often than not, exhilarating. His masterpiece is probably the little heralded Any Given Sunday, a football-as-war film that has the audacity (and clarity) to pose Cameron Diaz next to a horse-hung black football player (not to mention foregrounding an elderly Charlton Heston before a widescreen-televised distortion of his shackled, bare-chested Ben-Hur).
No such Cameron and the Cock aesthetics in World Trade Center, but then respectful solemnity, it seems, is the new black. Let the pundits yammer on about Stone's rehabilitation. He's merely catering to fashion, courting the very folks who would attack him because of his controversies (and let's be honest, if at this point you find anything Stone does truly controversial, you need to get out more), which is not to say that this deathly dull work-for-hire lacks for a few striking passages. 
As has been remarked elsewhere, the prelude to the towers' collapse is masterful. Stone is in full control of his orchestrations here as he captures the mundane routines of Manhattan's multicultural hoi polloi - even the Port Authority Jackie Gleason statue has his part to play in the proceedings. When American Airlines Flight 11 hits the first tower, Stone's technique falters slightly: his insistence on visualizing the plane as an ominous, half-glimpsed shadow (a failed attempt at transposing myth onto a too-concretely visualized reality) warns of the superficial reductiveness to come. But he regains his footing for a spell, long enough to offer a stunning portrait of 9/11's confusion: people don't run to the rescue, they stumble along like zombies, covered in ash and blood, while off-screen sounds hint at a hellish unknown. Jimeno's strange interlude with a shell-shocked World Trade Center officer (Tom Wright) is when the sequence, and the movie, peak. Then it all (fact and fiction both) comes tumbling down.
The early moments of what becomes the bleeding, vacant heart of World Trade Center hold some promise. Awakening within a mass grave of dirt, fire, and twisted metal, McLoughlin and Jimeno might be the protagonists of an Argento giallo, but Stone quickly settles into a narcoleptic rhythm, groggily cross-cutting between the men as they trade biographies, pop-cultural references, and homosocial admissions of love. The sense of claustrophobia that Stone so clearly wants to achieve is undone by his decision to intercut the outside world into McLoughlin and Jimeno's private realities (a similar problem afflicts Paul Greengrass' officious United 93) and it is here that the director unwittingly reveals his film's pandering and, yes Virginia, political bias. From this point forward Stone's gaze (all-inclusive at the outset) spirals downward into irreversible myopia. His portrayal of McLoughlin and Jimeno's 
families (the former headlined by a frighteningly contact-lensed Maria Bello) is a hopeless patriarchal muddle. Stone accepts the received wisdom that 9/11 was an attack on America as opposed to an attack on American soil (a crucial distinction). He shoots blindly in the dark for poetic evocation, but for every hit (as when Jimeno's wife, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, engages in a deeply felt act of defiance against a mocking red stop light) there are an increasing number of misses (as in the wishy-washy portrayal of Michael Shannon's Staff Sergeant Karnes, a former Marine who leaves his accounting job - after a thuddingly staged religious revelation - to offer a stoic hand at Ground Zero).
By the time a bottled-water toting Jesus Christ appears to Jimeno, Stone's film has completely derailed, and in an unfortunately less-than-spectacular fashion. It's telling of his artistry that Stone has Jimeno announce the sheer ridiculousness of an Evian (or Aquafina?) bearing messiah, and equally telling of his faults that Jimeno goes on to explain the visual metaphor, effectively neutering its impact. (To this end, Staff Sergeant Karnes' description of the clouds at Ground Zero - resembling divine veils concealing what God does not want us to see - becomes Stone's unconscious self-critique.) World Trade Center rejects cinema's potentialities for spiritual exaltation, settling instead for a homiletic, cynical moralism. McLoughlin's closing voiceover, in which he authoritatively speaks of the way 9/11 revealed all the forgotten good in humanity, is the height of presumptuousness, the moment a personal story forcibly becomes Everyman's story, making light of each individual's eternal struggle through virtue and vice. Stone's religiosity is all a pose - how else to explain the botched ascension staging when McLoughlin is finally raised through the rubble towards a blinding blue heaven, only to find himself the sloppy-seconds recipient of the standing ovation roundelay from Titanic?
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Shooting in the dark: poetry and posing in Oliver Stone's World Trade Center
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26 comments:
I haven't seen "World Trade Center" yet, but after reading your review of "United 93", I wonder what type of 9/11 film would satisfy you. I vehemently disagree with you on almost every major point. I guess I am the masochist you describe, as I saw U93 twice in the theater and found it to be a very powerful and well-made film. The "intrusion" of the ground control scenes was very important as was Ben Sliney's lack of action during the events. To me, the major theme of the first half of the film was shock, inaction and the lack of immediacy that those emotions brought about. Maybe the Bush Administration had been warned about planes being used as weapons, but for most, including those at the centers and on the plane, this was almost unfathomable. Hijackings on US soil were extremely rare, much less ones designed to use the planes as giant guided missiles. In fact, there is a staff meeting at the FAA and the reaction to the idea of a hijacking was nearly complete disbelief. I also appreciated that Greengrass showed how prevalent the lack of communication was and its role in the events; I worked in an Air Force ground control center in Germany, and let me tell you, these are not the well-oiled machines that are usually seen in films. They don't always function smoothly during average events, and they often fall to pieces during a crisis. The biggest fallacy spread by the 9/11 conspiracy freaks is that an enormous number of individual entities all worked together to stage the mayhem on that day, and I can't imagine how that could have happened in any reality-based world.
The second half of the film was the opposite of the first, and Greengrass wisely moves all the action to the plane itself. No shots of crying families at home, no footage of the towers collapsing, no more scenes dealing with the inadequacy of the military. Once the focus shifts entirely to the plane, Greengrass shows how difficult the confusion and disparity in viewpoints of the passengers would have hindered an attack on the cockpit. By the time Flight 93 was nearing its target, it fell on several passengers to cobble a plan together and make a final stand. To me, it didn't matter that I already knew this attack would fail to save them; I also knew the Alamo fell to the Mexicans, that Masada fell to the Romans, and that Sir Thomas More would be beheaded. It didn't make their stories any less compelling. The passengers attack isn't portrayed as particularly noble, just something that any of us would hopefully attempt when fighting for our lives. This made the abrubt ending tragic, moving and in my opinion, beautiful cinema.
I'm not sure what you wanted to see in terms of the terrorists; I didn't see monsters during the film like you did. I saw misguided young men who were following an ideology that had crossed the rubicon in terms of its need to make a statement. The lead terrorist is not portrayed heroically but surely isn't a one-dimensional villain by any stretch. I saw a tragic waste, not a cartoonish battle between good and evil. Did you see "Flight 93", the A&E version of these events. Perhaps a viewing of this piece of schlock prior to "United 93" would have aided you in your analysis. It was filled with all the cliches you seem to think permeate Grengrass's film, and I certainly appreciated how difficult it truly was to make a quality film based on these painful events.
'Officious'?
Good article, and I agree: this is a movie that does not justify its own existence. The lack of personal feeling from Stone is staggering, and a movie about Sept. 11 should not be rated PG-13.
Tully-
I have it in my docket to write a follow-up piece to my United 93 review. I reacted to the film, I think, as I did on the day it represents, though I found it to be a retrograde and completely unenlightening facsimile.
Per your query, I don't know if any 9/11 film would satisfy me. I have an Eric Rohmer quote stuck in my head (one I'm not entirely certain I agree with), but it resonates with my beliefs: "Don't turn the present into fiction."
And as for A&E's Flight 93, well, this poster is about all I need to see of that one (reminds me of a Calvin & Hobbes punchline):
www.edbaran.com/mtihomevideo/
artwork/flight93_key.jpg
Jeff-
Officious in the sense of (as my Webster's offers): "characteristic of somebody who is eager to give unwanted help or advice." I think that pretty much sums up the puppy-panting absolutism of United 93 and its creators.
And thanks to both of you for your comments; should have expressed that in my individual notes to you, but there's the brain-fart mentality of a Blogger rearing its ugly head. :-)
And as for A&E's Flight 93, well, this poster is about all I need to see of that one (reminds me of a Calvin & Hobbes punchline):
www.edbaran.com/mtihomevideo/
artwork/flight93_key.jpg God, what an awful poster. As a huge C & H fan I'm wondering which punchline exactly would work here.
Stone's talents (and his occasional profundity) lie in juxtaposition and bombast, in a breathless, ragged montage. His depthless canvases are prime examples of "what you see is what you get,"...
I haven't seen WTC, but here Keith captures many of my thoughts on Oliver Stone beautifully. Stone strikes me as one of the most temporary of filmmakers. His slam-bang editing and near constant visual editorializing make for what feels like a visual feast during the first run through, but on repeat viewings it all seems to dissipate. All that's left over are some sometimes good performances -- Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, and even Rodney Dangerfield in Natural Born Killers being among the best, I'd argue. Stone is a director that always makes me speculate as to how he shoots his movies while I'm watching them.
Thanks, but I'm afraid that the way you answered my "what do you mean by 'officious'?" comment, I know must ask, "what you mean by 'puppy-panting absolutism'?" "Unwanted" is clearly a matter of your personal choice.
Perhaps I should read your review of the earlier film, which I consider to be the year's best film so far. Sorry to digress from WTC.
Wagstaff says: Stone is a director that always makes me speculate as to how he shoots his movies while I'm watching them.
Energetically and haphazardly, I'd imagine, like someone who's just snorted a few lines of coke.
Oh.
Usually I finish one of Stone's films not feeling that I've watched a film so much as spent a lot of time staring at a piece of surly furniture. Occasionally it feels like surly, confused furniture that takes too long to make its point.
Dan-
The C&H punchline I'm thinking of (more of a hilarious panel by panel build-up) has Calvin imagining a farmer about to light his oven with a match (not knowing his gas main has broken), while a derailed locomotive and a plane in flames come barreling towards his house.
Calvin's punchline: "His eye twitches involuntarily."
Dan-
And stupid me, I forgot to mention the shifting tectonic plates that open up a cataclysmic fault line.
God I miss that strip.
Keith, it was simply The. Best. Strip. Ever. Sadly missed in this era of disposable mush.
I just read a review of yours on defectiveyeti.com of Sphere. God, it was beautiful. heh
Hey Cheesesteak, if you wanna inflict some pain, it helps to spotlight your target. At whom is your barbed comment aimed?
He's talking to Matt Zoller Seitz and he's complimenting him. I don't know why you would think he was making a 'barbed comment'.
Cheesesteak: I assume that was directed at me. Yeah, that Sphere review was basically a pornographic sci-fi riff, but it turns out to have had a pretty long shelf life.
Dan: And I don't think it was barbed, either, just facetious.
Mebbe it's the way I use 'heh' that had me leaning the wrong way. Sorry for the misinterpretation. Heh.
i agree w/ you on many thoughts and points, especially the idea that the film derailed at the jesus sightings...
it was as though Stone was desperatly trying to kill time.
--RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com
I have yet to see WTC. While I sided with those who loved U93 ultimately, it left me rather drained. I wasn't sure whether to love it or loathe it (I ultimately decided that the film allowed enough glimpses of pure humanity to portray the events within in perhaps the only way possible).
But that's a digression.
The point is -- is it even POSSIBLE to make a 9/11 film at this juncture? Sure, 75 years from now, someone will turn it into a tragic romance or something, but right now, there's almost no way to do the story. Skew too much towards realism and you punish the audience. Skew towards romanticism and you risk mawkishness or, worse, trivializing the events.
I'm sure there's a way to do such a film that I just haven't thought of (As stated, I thought U93 split the difference quite well, and I remain a fan of the hypnotic 25th Hour), but for now, evoking emotion from 9/11 is so easy that attempts to do so may always feel like a cheat.
What's wrong with punishing the audience?
Nothing. Exploiting tragedy to punish an audience, though, now that's a different matter.
The film is great but the reallity of it really bad...
Anybody knows which is the name/artist of the world trade center trailer song?
Re: "His eye twitches involuntarily."
Ahh yes, Farmer John and the leaking gasoline stove, the derailed train, the earthquake, AND the airplace plummetting to earth. Makes me want to photoshop that ridiculous cover.
I wonder if there's a single C&H strip I don't know by heart.
Great original review. I watched the film, then was so angry at it that I went on the web. I feel EXACTLY how you did regarding the film -- it opened very, very well, I also thought the plane shadow was cheesy, and it just went downhill from there like a bad made-for-tv movie. If he just went into documentary mode right after the boys were trapped it would have been much more engaging. Even the soundtrack pissed me off. If there were any more scenes with a kid saying, "when's daddy coming home?" I was going to turn it off.
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