The Triangle

Issue date: 8/11/06 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Earlier this year, I slammed United 93 as exploitative garbage for its inability to portray the events of September 11 with a politicized view, attempting to blind its audience with outright emotion. As it begins, similar dangers exist in Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, a film which constantly skirts hagiographic material in telling the fateful-day tale of John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage, essentially a screaming caricature wearing a moustache) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) two Port Authority cops trapped under the rubble of the Twin Towers. During the first hour or so, it seems that in its attempts to offend no one, it follows United 93's suit; in fact, it can be considered one of the few Oliver Stone works without the outright angry political charge of JFK and Nixon. But once it finishes, it all comes together. Taken as a straight drama, World Trade Center is admittedly a little weak, but it still manages to be a fascinating film by examining recent world history as social commentary. It is by far the superior 9/11 film of 2006, simply for the fact that it subtly understands the processes of human emotion; a piece that is, strangely, both laudatory and critical of the concepts of nostalgia and memory in the face of tragedy. When you get right down to it, while United 93 exploited kneejerk reactions, both political and emotional, to its own end, World Trade Center examines them.

Find this first when a buried Jimeno attempts to make conversation with McLoughlin by citing a typical tough-guy credo (here attributed to Ridley Scott's G.I. Jane) that "pain is good; pain means that you're alive." In the sense that physical pain is all that Jimeno and McLoughlin can feel while trapped, their only refuge comes from within their minds as they think of better times with their wives. This is where the film rests for most of its running time, but what the film realizes is that even these images bring terrible pain. Recalling the ghosts of our past will only bring pain and disappointment, not only in the sense that we regret being unable to relive them, but also in the sense that our memories are always sunnier than how we lived them. This is particularly true of McLoughlin's flashbacks - which coincide with those of his wife Donna (Maria Bello), who is left at home wondering if her husband is alive or not - so mired in wonderful thoughts of family moments that they are blind not only to the tragedy at hand (itself a kind of submission), but also to its own reality. Although politicians are often heard throwing around the phrase "pre-9/11 mindset" at opponents, one must also understand that the pre-9/11 mindset was also one of willful ignorance in its time - we never, ever lived in the perfect world of our memories, personally, professionally or politically.

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