Cineplexity: The movies that tried to make sense of 9/11

0:00We have come now to synoplexity. We're talking about the movies invites us to talk about well everything else. Some of the most significant events in modern American history have been reflected or depicted in our movies. Think World War II in films like The Best Years of Our Lives. The thing that scares me most is that everybody's going to try to rehabilitate me. The Watergate scandal in all the president's men. Just follow the money. Or The Vietnam War in films like Platoon. Looking back, we did not fight the enemy before ourselves. And the enemy was in us. This week we will mark 25 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks. So for this week's synoplexity we wanted to talk about how that momentous event has or has not been handled in the movies. Joining us to discuss we have Mark Rivers who produces our synoplexity segment. And Culture Reporter Andrew Limbong who also hosts our Book of the Day podcast. Welcome to the studio, both of you.

1:01It's good to be here. I can't think of that many movies that actually try to recreate the events of that day. How about you guys? Yeah, I mean, Hollywood by and large avoided it. I mean, anything that one could associate with that day, Hollywood wanted to either post-pondate or try to wipe it from the moment. I tell you guys are the ones that just dealt with it head on right? I'm thinking like, you know I did 93. This is, and this is five years later. Yeah, which is like a Paul Greengrass movie, right? We got another one. We got another hijack. 1975 draft is transponderable. I've got a possible hijack weapons. And then I rewatch World Trade Center, the Alvastone movies. Which came out the same year. We have these two, our two first big studio movies coming out the same year dealing with the day. 2006 though, five years after. Yeah, which is rough. I remember hating World Trade Center. So 2006 would be, I would have been 17 at this point. And I remember we were like just like in the muck of the war on terror. By that time, this sort of like hugging embrace of like New York, being like, we can be better. We can be the Kumbaya moment. Kind of wore off and it was all like very bleak.

2:02And then World Trade Center comes and it is a very nice honoring movie. It's somber. It's like a cinnamon memorial. Yeah. See, a World Trade Center is basing the true story of two port authority police officers here played by Nicholas Cage and Michael Pena who gets stuck under the rubble when the towers fall. Don't leave us. We'll be here a long time. We're not leaving you buddy. We're Marines. You are our mission. Alvastone who was known as this provocateur, right, pushing buttons. He's on his very best behavior. And a conspiracy theorist. And an anaconda. In other context. Yeah, conspiracy theorists. And here he is very seduced. But I would say that's kind of what makes the movie fail. In that it's frankly a little boring. And I think the movie reflects the kind of limits of fiction. You know, because 9-11, that in its own way, it felt like a disaster movie. You know, and how could a fictionalized representation of that day measure up against the reality of that day. United 93 was about the only hijacked plane that did not reach its intended target

3:06because the passenger is on board rebelled. We have a lot up here. Nobody's going to help us. We got to do it. I'm watching it 20 years later from its from its release. It's interesting to watch because it kind of just comes off as just this is just a Paul Greengrass thriller. This could be a boring movie in ways. And you don't really get to know the passengers in the film. So while it is, it's harrowing, but it is very much of its moment when this, this aspiration towards commemorating these people. But you don't really get any insight. There are no really insights to glean. This would be a short segment if we were only going to talk about films that are literally about the day. But I think there are a lot of movies that are about kind of the psychological impact of that day or sort of what it was like to live in its shadow. What are some that stand out for you guys? I'm thinking a lot about rain over me. All right, I'll be a bit of rain over you to bed. So this is a... Please defend this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a Don Chitel, starts in this movie where he's old college buddies with Adam Sandler,

4:08whose wife and kids were on one of the planes. And Don Chitel runs into Adam Sandler after not seeing him for a minute. And Adam Sandler is obviously in grief and in shock and doesn't want to talk to anybody and all that stuff. At its core, it's a buddy hangout movie. You just watch these guys hang out, play video games, they go to a Mel Brooks movie marathon. And it's a fun hang. I think that's the problem though. It's like the movie is having... There's so much to the fun hang. I feel like the movie almost is forgetting that. I mean, isn't this about trauma? Isn't this about grief? I feel like the movie doesn't really know what tone it wants to have. I think it tries to do that thing where you get a couple guys in a room together and you're making fun of various things about each other. And then you talk about like, also how's like when your mom died? You know what? It's that like turn of like how to handle these emotions. And it accomplishes this thing about it's been an X amount of years since this happened. And nobody really wants to talk about it. Because nobody really wants to talk about grief. Because nobody really wants to be a downer. Nobody wants to think about it.

5:08But at a certain point, you kind of have to figure out what your life has like from here on out. I mean, you're single now. You could do whatever you... What? After what happened with your family and everything. Oh, wait. I don't have a family. No, I know. I was just trying to make small talk, but that was stupid. I'm going to go in the opposite direction and say that I film like rain over me and also extremely loud and incredibly close, which is based on the 2005 book. Came out in 2011 that was about this kid who loses his father in the attacks and has to kind of find a kind of meaning in all this happened. But you miss about it? I miss his voice. I miss his voice telling me he loves me. Me too. Those movies to me are kind of an example that even something as catastrophic and awful as 9-11 can kind of be made commercial or banal. You know, like it's almost like these films used in 9-11 as a and a most no cheat code for the movies to matter when the I don't think the stories are doing the work. People talk about the Spike Lee movie 25th hour as a movie that like says something about 9-11.

6:09Shout out to Spike Lee. I remember watching it like recently. I know watch it when it came out. So I watched it recently with that in mind. And I was like most of the 9-11 stuff is the side character just happens to live by the whole. And I'm like, what am I? That's I think that's what I'm supposed to be taking away. That's like literal. So this is a film about Edward Noran plays this drug dealer who has hours away from going prison. His hours away from going to prison and serving this long prison sentence. And his two friends played by a folks in Morehopman and Barry Pepper. They have this conversation about how essentially life is we've known it with our friend is basically over. And they're they're having this argument literally overlooking the ruins of the towers. After tonight, it's goodbye my dear. What does that mean? So I think that movie is successful in kind of capturing just like the sense of mourning of that period and the sense of like we don't know what to do next and we don't know what's going to happen next. But we do know that whatever happens next, it won't be the same as how it was before.

7:09You're not going to see me as exactly what you'll never see him again. Even though Hollywood, by and large, has not depicted 9-11. 9-11 is still found its way into the movies. I feel and I think those I think we can talk about films where that is where that is more obvious and those films are really interesting. Give us a few names. I'll jump in on one. There's Spider-Man, the first Spider-Man movie directed by Sarah E. Toe McGuire and Spider-Man. Who are you? You know who I am. I do. You're friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. That movie means a lot to me. That movie came out I believe in O2. Yep. And at the end of that movie, there's a scene where Green Goblin is about to attack Spider-Man, Spider-Man is like hanging from a bridge trying to say Mary Jane trying to say about the thing on the phone. And then all of a sudden, when Green Goblin is about to fly in for like a killing attack, the New Yorkers come through. You mess with me, you mess with me, you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us. To this day, whenever you watch it, I cry a little bit and you know, it's like I was so like touched that this was very specifically a New York moment.

8:13And this idea that New York takes care of each other. Yeah. Well then if you go darker, Steven Spielberg is more of the world from 2005. This thing's machined and crawled out of the ground, started to torture everything. Just killing everybody. Where is it? Is it Terrace? Spielberg was very open about saying that 9-11 informed his his movie and you can see it in the images where you have people running away covered in ash in the city or these scenes of flyers of missing people on walls and poles and things like that. And I think the kind of spooked unspoken undercurrent of War of the Worlds and this is kind of a dandelolo idea I'm riffing on here. Is Spielberg's reckoning with the possibility or idea that the defining image makers of history may not be artists like himself. But Terrace, I think you kind of, you get that sense of fear in this film. And it's genuinely disturbing and I think it is Spielberg saying that escape is not really possible in this moment. And for him to be saying that. Right. For one of our great escape is filmmakers to be saying this.

9:13I think is what makes it point in. That was NPR's Mark Rivers and NPR's Andrew Limbong. Thank you both so much for joining me in the studio. Thank you. You're welcome.