I watched September 11 recently, having seen both
United 93 and
World Trade Center.
September 11 is quite a different film, and much better than the other two.
From the moment the film opens, when you see Afghan children making mud bricks by hand to build a shelter because "the Americans are going to bomb us again", you know this is going to be different. September 11 ambitiously addresses the events of the tragic event from a multicultural perspective, highlighting short films on the subject from directors all over the world. The film rightly demonstrates the range and complexity of the issue, and implicitly the inappropriateness of simple responses and solutions. I appreciated the depiction of U.S. itself as multicultural, rather than the monocultural nightmare depicted in too many films and T.V. shows.
The film is ambitious in its breadth, and it's potential for opening too many doors without presenting a cohesive whole. United 93 and Twin Towers had a specific focus, allowing us to relive terrible hours and minutes and examine personal perspectives. September 11 does this, too, but with brevity and greater variety. The memorable contribution by
Alejandro González Iñárritu, as much an art installation as cinema, is plenty excruciating and reminds us that we don't need two hours of tears and pain to dust off the brutality of these moments from our memory.
September 11 is an important and needed film. Some will find it long and parts hard to watch, myself included. It's in several languages and doesn't come packaged with a theme song by Aerosmith. It is, however, an appropriately inclusive and human response to a such an important, multi-dimentional event.