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September 11 Directors: Amos Gitai, Danis Tanovic, Shohei Imamura, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Mira Nair, Samira Makhmalbaf, Sean Penn, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Ken Loach, Youssef Chahine, Claude Lelouch Number of Items: 1 Format: Color, Closed-captioned Audience Rating: Unrated Running Time: 135 minutes Studio: Empire Pictures Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2004-10-26 Buy from Amazon |
 "Follies of American policies; ain't whole story though"While I watched this DVD, I was really torn. On one hand, I want to truly believe that the US is truly a sentinel of freedom. Yet in ages past our foreign policies have testified otherwise: from Kissinger's wretched approval of the bloody Chilean, Argentine and Brazilian military dictatorships to our strong support of both Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran in the 80s war and Usama Bin Laden against Russia and her folly in Afghanisthan. What is one to make of our support of the dastardly Mobuto during the 60s? Himself seamlessly donning the robes of the slavemaster left behind by the inhumane Belgians. Yet, to point to these cases, and to turn a blind eye to our efforts to be a good force would be grevious. Where do I start? The Marshall Plan-that blessed antidote to the humiliating Versailles treaty? That is an equal case could be made for the US that has done equally well in being a benevolent force. After all, we were the bulwark against the Japanese and Germans in WW II. Kennedy's threat forbade the Chinese from invading India in 1962. The strict enforcement of the no-fly zone during the 90s sowed the seeds for what now appears to be the beginnings of a strong Kurdish democracy. Furthermore, George W. Bush chastising a petulant Putin over the Russian's abuse of the tenents of democray: free speech etc., appears to usher in light whence the darkness ruled. Saudia Arabia and Egypt have not been spared for their hypocrisy either. Bush has called them out. I take issue with this DVD since it harangues the United States for the most part. Even if the US is guilty of this sanctioning of barbarity in, say, Latin America, what have these countries done to rehabilitate themselves? Has there been a truth and reconciliation committee that indicts members of the Chilean or Argentine country that willingly participated in this barbarity? What of Yasir Arafat? How did this man justify his hoarding of the millions when thousands of his people existed on the fringes of poverty? And, yet, there are winds of change. Witness the Iraqi election and the Lebanese protest against Syria. Then, again, why does Bush endorse that dictator General Musharif of Pakisthan? A good companion to this DVD would be Granta's vol. 77 Spring issue. This issue is titled What We Think of America. This little publication captures the complexity that America engenders in the world over: the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. Unfortunately, this DVD does too little justice to the United States of America. This DVD will appeal to the shrill naysayers of the United States of America. It will equally incite the America-is-good-no-matter-what-battalion to great acts of verbal fury. Here's a toast that the US dollar will be strong as it once was. "Just an Unabashedly Anti-American Diatribe"This DVD was just the opposite of what I expexted when I first popped it into my player. As it turns out, most of the films in this collection put the blame squarely on the US for inciting the WTC attacks. A few, like the Chilean story, imply that the attack was poetic justice. Some actually seem to trivialize the loss of life on 9/11. Even the US entry, directed by Sean Penn, has an ambiguous ending that could be interpreted as seeing positives in the attack (flowers begin to blossom in the newfound sunlight created by the collapse of the towers). On the plus side, all of the films are technically slick. In particular, I thought the darkly comic Isreali entry was brilliantly staged and photographed. I'm a liberal. I welcome a diversity of views. But I also value honesty. This is just anti-U.S. propaganda masquerading under the title of "September 11." If thinly disguised U.S. bashing is what you want, you'll love this.  "A Global Interpretation of 9/11 that Will Make You Think"French producer Alain Brigand gathered a collection of eleven film directors from around the world and gave them an assignment: to make a film of eleven minutes and nine seconds duration that symbolized their perception of the events on September 11, 2001. The results in this DVD, while occasionally uneven, are a brilliant response - thought-provoking, shocking, touching, cautionary, and confused. More important, ten of these eleven vignettes (excluding that of Sean Penn) allow us to view 9/11 through a non-American lens, an opportunity we seldom have to see ourselves as others see us. The best of these eleven shorts are magnificent and heart-rending. Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran) tells the story of a woman teacher at an Afghani refugee camp in Iran. First she wanders through the camp, retrieving the young children for school who are busy making mud for bricks to protect themselves from an American atomic bomb. She herds them into a makeshift classroom and asks them if they know about a terrible event that has occurred in the world. Two people fell into a nearby well, and one was killed, the children tell her. Following a marvelous parody of a philosophical discussion about God's plan, the children are coaxed into a moment of silence standing next to their own tower, the smokestack for their brick kiln. Claude Lelouch (France) directs an intimate story of a deaf woman in New York who is busy writing a break-up letter to her boyfriend that terrible morning. She misses the entire event on television only to find her boyfriend standing at the door, covered in dust and crying. Idrissa Ouedragogo (Burkina Faso) tells the charming story of five boys who spot Osama bin Laden in their remote village and set out to capture him for the $25 million reward. Tragedy for some creates opportunity for others. Mira Nair (India) presents a Middle Eastern mother in a Queens neighborhood who is victimized by anger, discrimination, and sacrifice, ultimately having to deliver a devastating eulogy. Two of the shorts take controversial but wildly different approaches. Ken Loach (UK) relates 9/11 to another 9/11 in 1973 when the U.S. backed the overthrow of the democratically-elected Allende in favor of Pinochet. The result was a horrific, U.S.-inspired reign of terror that took more than 30,000 Chilean lives. The narrator writes that Chileans will remember the WTC victims on the first anniversary of their tragic deaths; he hopes Americans might remember the 29th anniversary of so many Chilean deaths. By contrast, the Mexican director Alejandro Inarritu uses a mostly blank screen, broken by flashes of human bodies falling from the burning towers, to transmit a simple question: does God's light guide us or blind us? Each of the eleven pieces in September 11 are unique in story line and cinematic approach. A few, such as Shohei Imamura's (Japan) and Youssef Chahine (Egypt) fall flat, but they are far outweighed by the others. Some pieces may touch you, and some may anger you, but all will make you stop and think. The events of 9/11 were not just an American event, they were a world event. While we have every right to our own national perspective, we gain from opening our mind and hearts to the rest of the world, sharing our anger as well as our grief. "Anatomy of the september 11 th"like to get this movie  "very uneven, but saved by its best contributions"These are eleven short films inspired by the 911 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As a collective work, each film is totally independent of the others, and therefor lets each filmmaker retain his or her individuality. The result is a ver unneven end product. Some are brilliant and haunting, like the japanese, french, mexican and american contributions, while others are pretentious and pointless. The egyptian contribution is the low point. A long diatribe of cardboard dialogues by cardboard actors, which gets tiring as soon as it starts. The four stars are a kind of weighted average. Though the individual films go from deserving five stars, all the way down to one, the best pieces are so original and sensitive as to make the whole thing worth seeing. |
