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Old 03-02-2004, 03:02 PM   #1 (permalink)
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9/11 movies

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March 3, 2004
MOVIE REVIEW | 'COLLATERAL DAMAGES'
Anguished Emotions, Smoldering Since 9/11
By STEPHEN HOLDEN

n the two and a half years since they occurred, the events of Sept. 11, 2001, have become so enmeshed in politics, speculation and debate that in looking back one can be distracted from the trauma of the terrorist attacks themselves. Two documentaries, "Collateral Damages" and "The First 24 Hours," both by Étienne Sauret, return to the primal events. These films can be seen in tandem at the Film Forum in Manhattan, where they open today.

Watching these intimate and heartbreaking films will inevitably take you back to the horrifying sense of amazement at watching two seemingly indestructible modern towers collapse on themselves on a clear blue morning, killing who knew at the time how many people. The mind couldn't really grasp the disaster then. The passage of time has made it more comprehensible.

"The First 24 Hours" is a near-wordless half-hour that observes the fall of the World Trade Center towers, then wanders, distracted and shellshocked, through the rubble of ground zero, where rescue workers and vehicles converge like so many ants at the foot of a toxic mountain. This film is a meditation on the scale of a catastrophe so enormous that all the assembled resources seem paltry and inadequate. Barely audible voices float and mingle with the cries of sirens. But the immensity of devastation is such that drifting through the wasteland feels a little like visiting a beach where the ocean and the great outdoors reduce the shrillest alarms to numb, blurred background noise. As the camera rambles around ground zero, a surreal moonscape of ash and stories-high destruction where most workers wear masks, you try to take it in but are still left dumbfounded.

Many grief-stricken traumatized words are uttered in the 60-minute "Collateral Damages," an intimate scrapbook of the memories of several firefighters who survived the horror. Again and again, words fail them, and an uneasy chasm of silence descends. Much of that silence is a simple human reluctance to try to describe the unimaginable. The rest is grief and shock.

From Engine Company 6, the firehouse nearest the World Trade Center, we meet Billy Green, the sole survivor of a five-man team that climbed the North Tower before being called back, and Al Sicignano, who because of a death in the family didn't report to work that morning. From Rescue Company 2, a Brooklyn firehouse specializing in high-risk rescues, Capt. Philip Ruvolo bluntly recalls that on Sept. 11 all seven on-duty members of the company responded and never returned.

Some of the most painful memories shared are a horrified awareness of those who jumped to their deaths. Some, Mr. Green recalls, landed in a grisly pile of bodies; he partly blocked the memory of that by telling himself it was a pile of rubble. One particularly sharp image is of how the floors of the World Trade Center crumpled, accordionlike, compressing into a mere eight inches each. There are memories of fishing out body parts, of finding a face detached from a head. Images of devastated firetrucks being hauled away to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island invariably conjure thoughts of the dead firefighters who once drove them.

The emotional devastation to these men, including survivor's guilt, is apparent in every carefully chosen word and haunted expression. Because of the hope of finding fellow firefighters buried in the rubble, ground zero exerted a dreadful magnetic pull. For many weeks, after regular working hours, men returned to the site to search for physical confirmation of their worst fears.

The trauma tended to alienate them from their families. We hear of nightmares and flashbacks, and sense explosive emotions barely held in check. The most moving aspect of "Collateral Damages" is the firefighters' sense of brotherhood and duty to their jobs. It is expressed matter-of-factly, without a shred of smugness or superiority, almost with embarrassment. But time does heal, and even the worst memories sink in and are absorbed. To watch "The First 24 Hours" and "Collateral Damages" today is a purging experience.

Accompanying them is a four-minute curtain raiser, "Imagine," a sober film without dialogue, made in 1986 and set to the John Lennon anthem. Through a series of white rooms whose windows look out at the New York skyline and the twin towers, a sequence of psychodramas tumble from one room to the next. The short film effectively establishes the elegiac mood for all that follows.

COLLATERAL DAMAGES

Produced and directed by Étienne Sauret; director of photography, Mr. Sauret; edited by Emily Gumpel; music by Stuart Dempster and Stephen Vitiello; released by Turn of the Century Pictures and Emerging Pictures. Shown with "The First 24 Hours" and a four-minute short, Zbigniew Rybczynski's "Imagine," at the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue, South Village. Running time: 60 minutes. This film is not rated.

THE FIRST 24 HOURS

Directed by Étienne Sauret; director of photography, Mr. Sauret; edited by Tracy Granger; produced by Mr. Sauret and David Carrera. Shown with "Collateral Damages" and a four-minute short, Zbigniew Rybczynski's "Imagine," at the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue, South Village. Running time: 30 minutes. This film is not rated.
There are some people in America who are sick and tired of the whole 9/11 images and dialogue. I was in Times Square at the time and my mother in law was across the street at Deutche Bank wondering what was happening around her. For me, I find it very cathartic to watch these images. I don't have nightmares, but I do have infinite sadness, hurt, and anguish from it. I still cannot fathom some of my own thoughts from that day as I was trying to digest what was happening all around me. Because we are a media company we had plenty of televisions all tuned to news stations. The ABC jumbotron was showing the news to those people walking in from their commutes. People were phoning in from cellphones stuck on ferries, trains, and buses, as the city was slowing being shut down.

I'm really hoping to make it to one of these screenings, but moreso, I'm glad that they exist to help those that come after us in future generations to understand just how devastating this was to the world.
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