| BRINGING OUT THE LIVING : Oliver Stone's 'World Trade Center' [5/10] |
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| Thursday, 28 September 2006 | |
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contains spoilers One does feel a certain sympathy for Oliver Stone, whose World Trade Center arrives on our screens only a few short months after Paul Greengrass's United 93. These are the first major Hollywood dramatisations of 9/11 events - and while Stone's ploddingly conventional film isn't by any means without merit, Greengrass's work ranks high among recent cinema's most remarkable achievements. With Stone on characteristically unsubtle, at times bombastic form, the name of the game here is inspirational, perhaps even aggressive uplift. Faced with a dizzying number of potential stories from the fateful day in quesion, Stone and his scriptwriter Andrea Berloff concentrate on one of the few narratives with an unambiguously happy, near-miraculous ending: the fate of two Port Authority Police Department cops, Officer John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Officer Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) who were on the undergound WTC concourse when one of the Twin Towers collapsed above them, trapping the pair beneath a heap of rubble and twisted metal. The focus switches back and forth between the helplessly immobilised cops and their distraught wives Donna and Allison (Maria Bello, Maggie Gyllenhaal - both frustratingly underused), who, equally helpless, watch the wall-to-wall TV coverage of the unfolding horror. The film then introduces a third strand to the narrative in the imposing form of former US Marine Corps member Staff Sergeant Karnes (Michael Shannon), who impulsively walks away from his suit-and-tie civilian life ("I don't think you guys realizes this but this country is now at war,"), gets a USMC buzzcut, dons his old fatigues and heads off to Manhattan... Karnes is in many ways World Trade Center's most compelling and disturbing presence. As played by the hulking, implacably steely-eyed Shannon, he's like a cross between G I Joe, John Wayne, The Terminator, and the ghostly uber-marine known as 'Camouflage,' from Stan Ridgway's satirical hit single of the same name. Stone and Berloff's handling of Karnes's character - an individual repeatedly and explicitly linked with God, the President, and the Stars & Stripes - couldn't be called satirical in any way (this is certainly no "You, Me and Debris") but the film's attitude towards him isn't entirely hagiographic. And it's this element of subtle ambiguity that gives what's otherwise a rather stiffly reverential, stodgy enterprise (one that, despite early hints of marital discord in the McLoughlin household, ends up a lachrymose, Frequency-like tribute to the American family) a rare spark of thought-provoking complexity. Witnessing the stygian horrors of Ground Zero (recreated, like all technical aspects of World Trade Center, in remarkably convincing detail) for th first time, the laconic Karnes waxes apopcalyptic: "It's like God made a curtain with the smoke, shielding us from what we're not yet ready to see," he remarks to another uniformed rescuer before striding off to continue his 'mission.' His interlocutor's muttered response is inaudible to Karnes, and the audience might also strain to make it out on the noisy soundtrack - but what he says is "OK, nutbag." That single two-syllable word casts all of Karnes' subsequent heroic actions into slightly different light - likewise his ominous closing comment that "They're gonna need some good men out there... To avenge this." As the end-titles inform us, Karnes went on to serve two spells in Iraq. But what does Iraq have to do with 9/11? Not much, if anything, according to almost all experts in the field, the 9/11 hijackers being almost all Saudi Arabian, and Al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden never having hidden his vicious disdain for Saddam's despotic, but rigorously secular regime. Opinion polls indicate, however, that the majority of Americans believe there was a direct link between Iraq and 9/11 - a belief encouraged by the machinations of their own government, who stood to benefit from exploiting this 'confusion.' That bald title-card about Karnes' subsequent exploits is hardly likely to disabuse such people of their mistaken ideas - and World Trade Center also avoids even examining the possibility that the Marine-Corps mentality which Karnes incarnates (inkarnates?) could perhaps have contributed in making the United States so unpopular in so many countries, and such a tempting target for the murderous 9/11 hijackers. And what about the consequences of the 'Karnes doctrine' of vengeance? The final end-title card proclaims that the film, which lays everything on just that little bit too thick, is dedicated to "all those who fought, died, and were wounded that day:" that day, with no mention of the uncounted thousands of civilians who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan over the subsequent half-decade. It's telling that, when we're shown a montage of how TV viewers around the world reacted to the attacks, all the faces we see are mournfully solemn - whereas in certain areas the murderous atrocities were greeted as a cause for noisily jubilous celebration. Likewise, with so much dialogue (rather wearingly) devoted to the naming of the Jimenos' baby (he favours Alissa, she prefers Olivia), did it never cross Berloff and Stone's mind to wonder just why 'Osama' became one of the most popular names in the Muslim world for boys born after 11th September, 2001? Neil Young 28th September, 2006 WORLD TRADE CENTER : [5/10] : USA 2006 : Oliver STONE : 129 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Odeon cinema, MetroCentre, Gateshead (UK), 25th September 2006 - press show
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