BEFORE: Sticking with the 9/11 documentary theme - will try to get back to narrative films tomorrow.
THE PLOT: Filmed over the ensuing years after the attack on New York's World Trade Center, this documentary takes a look a the physical and emotional healing process involved in the aftermath
AFTER: This is another powerful film relating to the 9/11 attacks, but details 9 years in the lives of 5 people who were directly affected - one woman who was badly burned, and 4 others who lost loved ones. I did some background reading about the film, I think there were initially nine subjects but this got trimmed down to five, I'm guessing the strongest five. And there were 900 hours of footage that got edited down to the final film, so again I'm guessing this was an exercise in focusing on the strongest material.
The director, Jim Whitaker, actually started by setting up time-lapse cameras at Ground Zero, in order to track the progress of the clean-up efforts, and later the rebuilding. That footage is downright amazing, it's reminiscent of the time-lapse work that appears in the movie "Koyaanisqatsi", and this is further reinforced by the use of Philip Glass music in both films. But at some point the project shifted, and the filmmaker apparently realized he was missing the human element, so the interviews began.
Not appearing in the film is footage from the attack on the Towers, or the collapse of the buildings, or the surrounding chaos. There are some audio tracks from the day - really, that's all that's needed. There are still shots of the destruction, and since they're set against people's recollections of the day, a powerful analogy starts to develop - the people are in some way as damaged as the skyline.
Annual interviews with the subjects are then mixed with footage of the PATH station being rebuilt, 7 World Trade Center being built, and then the construction of the memorial and the beginnings of the then-named Freedom Tower. This is brilliant, because the construction becomes a symbol of the people's healing process, and vice versa. After any personal tragedy, someone may go through a period of darkness, inactivity and confusion, but at some point they hopefully find a way to pick up the pieces of their life and rebuild something new in the place of the old.
It's a case where "inspiring" is an understatement - for someone to lose their fiancé, their mother, their brother or best friend and to just not know when they'll be able to love again, or even laugh. It happens to everyone at some point, but this is a case where it happened to thousands of people at the same time, which is mind-boggling. You might not be able to even imagine the loss of 3,000 people, so this film smartly narrows the focus to THESE 5 people and their losses, and they become a microcosm for the entire tragedy.
No one ever fully recovers from a tragic loss like this, so the best they can really hope for is that eventually the pain becomes manageable and/or infrequent, so they can move on - and that's universal as well as intensely personal. The people all eventually learn to strike a balance between living for the memory of their loved ones, and striking out in new personal directions. This was at times very tough to watch, but it's still very important stuff.
RATING: 6 out of 10 skin grafts
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