It is difficult to make movies about 9/11 – both feature films and documentaries – because these tragic and brutal attacks were so heavily covered in the media when they took place and during the subsequent 20 years that it may seem that there is little left to say. But in spite of this, filmmakers continue trying to capture and comment on the trauma that changed the world forever and a number of dramas and documentaries will be shown to mark the 20th anniversary.
The two best-known feature films about the attacks, World Trade Center and United 93, will be shown as part of the programming on Yes Action Movies starting on September 11 at 10 p.m.
World Trade Center is also available on Netflix.
Directed by Oliver Stone, World Trade Center is the more conventional film and stars Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena as two Port Authority police officers who get trapped in the rubble. It is a well-done action movie, cutting back and forth between the cops in peril and their family members, among them Maria Bello as Cage’s wife and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Pena’s, who are watching the tragedy unfold live on television. Everyone does a good job here, but seeing such stars as Cage cannot help but take you out of the drama and it is hard to forget this is a movie.
United 93, directed by Paul Greengrass, is the best of all the 9/11 films I have seen, and since it is a docudrama it has an immediacy that World Trade Center does not. United 93 was the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania en route to destroy the Capitol after its heroic passengers tried to overpower the hijackers. The film shows what went on aboard the plane, pieced together from cellphone calls the passengers managed to make, as well as texts they sent. The scenes on the plane are intercut with a story about one of the air traffic control centers, where those on duty realized that a spate of hijackings had occurred and had little time and guidance to figure out what to do. The air traffic control center scenes are based on transcripts from that day. Watching this movie, you really feel the peril and the chaos, as the ordinariness of the flight at the beginning is contrasted with the horrific violence about to take place. Clearly, everyone seeing United 93 will know how it turned out, but it is an incredibly suspenseful movie, as well as being deeply disturbing.
The Looming Tower, which is available on Amazon Prime Video in Israel, is a docudrama series based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Lawrence Wright about the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI and how, in Wright’s view, that led up to the 9/11 attacks and set the stage for the war in Afghanistan. The twin towers fall only in the last episode and the rest consists of political maneuvering, going back way into the 1990s. It stars Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, Peter Sarsgaard and Bill Camp.
The Netflix series, 9/11 and the War on Terror, is a documentary series that puts the attacks into the context of the terror groups operating from the 1980s. It examines the intelligence failures that aided al-Qaeda, as well as the US attempt to eradicate terror groups in Afghanistan following the attacks.
CNN has been heavily promoting the documentary 9/11, which will air on September 12 at 3 a.m. Israel time, which the promos claim is the first documentary to show video from inside the World Trade Center on 9/11. Directed, filmed, and executive produced by Gédéon and Jules Naudet, brothers and filmmakers, and retired Manhattan firefighter James Hanlon, the documentary is a minute-by-minute portrayal of the attacks, from the perspective of firefighters from the Duane Street New York Fire Department. The filmmakers were there that morning to film the training of a rookie firefighter and they rushed to the twin towers with the firefighters after American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into Tower One. The brothers documented the heroic rescue efforts throughout the day and were actually inside Tower One as it began to fall. 9/11 also explores where some of those rescuers are today, as well as the children of the firefighters, many of whom have become firefighters themselves. The Naudet brothers have made several previous films using some of their footage from that day, including one 10 years ago, and it is riveting to see the tragedy from the point of view of firefighters.
Surviving 9/11 by Arthur Cary on Cellcom TV features 13 people who were caught up in the events of that day reminiscing about how they coped with the attacks in real time, when it was so unclear what was happening.
9/11: The Lost Tapes – on Yes Docu on September 11 at 10 p.m. and on Yes Vod and Sting TV – by Chris Martin (the filmmaker, not the Coldplay frontman), is based on a series of audio recordings that were released under a Freedom of Information Act in 2012. They reveal the dramatic moments leading up to the terrorist attacks and the reaction of air-traffic controllers and military commanders after the planes crashed into the towers. Among other revelations Martin uncovered are how far away military jets were when the second plane crashed.
There are a number of political movies and series about the events of 9/11, including Michael Moore’s 2004 Fahrenheit 9/11, which is more a critical look at US president George W. Bush’s administration than a portrayal of the tragedy itself. Spike Lee’s HBO series, NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021½, a series about COVID and 9/11, which had to be reedited because Lee gave time to a conspiracy theorist, is not scheduled to be shown in Israel at press time and screening links have not yet been sent to journalists here. While it is inevitable that discussions of world-changing events will become political, perhaps the best way to honor those who lost their lives is to focus on the details of their sacrifice and what actually happened on that sad day.