Filmmakers over the past decade have had trouble mounting productions based around one of the most dramatic and monumental events of this young century. 9/11 changed the face of our American culture forever but the films that followed that event have struggled to properly put it into any significant historical context. Any film that has tried to tell a story based around it or even mention it as a plot point is met with cries of “too soon” and financial failure.
Filmmakers Oliver Stone and Paul Greengrass were the first mainstream filmmakers to tackle the event head on to somewhat mixed results. Stone’s World Trade Center was a surprisingly straight forward, yet uninspired tribute to those that died at the towers. Greengrass’ United 93 was a harrowing and almost too true to life recreation of what happened on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania; scary and shocking in its precise detail and “you are there” cinematography. Both were financial failures as audiences have spurned any film that has tried to deal with those events or the wars that it spawned, looking for escape rather than confrontation. This is a far cry from back in the 1930s and 40s when Hollywood regularly made films centered on World War II as the war raged on in Europe.
A Film Log 