Another face of the Twin Towers attack: a fiction and a disturbing documentary on the intimacy of power

September 11: inside the president’s war room

A co-production between BBC and AppleTv have brought to this platform, for this anniversary, this formidable documentary work which recreates with its protagonists, minute by minute, what happened on September 11, 2001 and the next few days. Protagonists: the then president George Bush and the staff of his team, as well as some journalists who followed him in his entourage.

Director Adam Wishart shows what can happen when you get this precious piece of journalism that is full access. Right, twenty years later. But maybe that’s why, due to the distance of the passing time, is that the film becomes such a disturbing material. With an off-record voiceover from actor Jeff Daniels, interviews and a generous archive of what transpired in presidential intimacy, as the title announces, the government of the most powerful country in the world, which was in charge at the time, bluntly comments on astonishment, ignorance, fear, fury. The details behind the decisions they were making on the fly, as the “note fell” that the United States was “under attack”, on its territory, for the first time in its history.

From what we all know, how much the world has changed from this fact, it thrills to hear these officials and soldiers in this intimacy of human beings. There is a precious and juicy “behind the scenes” of some of the iconic images he left that day. Like that of Bush in front of the children of an elementary school, when one of his services whispers to him, after the impact of the second plane, that it is not a plane crash, as they thought. . The president’s naught face has gone down in history. The face of a man trying to process information without scaring the boys, forcing himself to finish the activity of what had started out as an easy day, with a light agenda. One day he had started to run 5 kilometers in the sunny Florida dawn. And that it would end, if such a thing were possible, with him and his team flying erratically in the Presidential plane, from bunker to bunker, as the world froze.

Yes, it’s a film made “together” with the former president. It does not enter and he hardly mentions in the epilogue the long disputed interventionist war that followed, based on the decisions of this same casting. But its information is so rich and organized with such a rhythm, that one sees it with the tension of a thriller, if it were not about pure real events. As when terrible orders are brought up, such as that to “get off” a passenger plane which had been hijacked, United Flight 93, in which the passengers gave their lives to avoid the attack.

More or less dramatic, they all sound like revelations in this film which manages to recreate what happened from the privacy of its protagonists. The role of the media, the essential presence of televised images, the absurdity of the communications which failed in the very presidential kidney, the preparation and behind the scenes of the televised message of the Oval Room, the pain of imminent death and even of some moments of humor, like that of Bush calling his parents stranded in Milkwakee thanks to an order to clear the sky given by his son’s government. The last act has the expected emotional charge. When they finally got out of their bunkers and offices and into the disaster area.

How much is a life worth?

Director Sara Colangelo (Kindergarten teacher) presented this film at Sundance last year, which is finally being streamed (Netflix). A drama of lawyers, a fiction based on real facts, which centers on the attack, but discusses what happened next. This is the story of Ken Feinberg (Michael Keaton), a specialist lawyer in the definition of cold numbers that compensate for searing tragedies. A man of solid prestige, a Democrat, who teaches on the subject and runs a hard-working law firm. A taciturn man, somewhat distant, whose emotions seem reserved for the moments when he listens to the opera alone.

The man chosen by the government to take over a delicate task. Avoiding Potential Economic Collapse Due to Compensation Claims for 3,000 Killed in Bombings. Besides Keaton and his right-hand man, Amy Ryan, the film stars Stanley Tucci, another lawyer, who lost his wife in the attack and whose voice will be heard by the hundreds of families who feel the need for something more. that number offers on a piece of paper.

It is clear from the start that Feinberg is facing a life changing case, in the deepest and most personal sense. Forcing him to leave behind the pride that such a responsibility implies in order to truly connect with human tragedy. What various interests want to limit with mathematical formulas that save them from bankruptcy.

All with the question of class in addition, since death continues inequalities, in a tragedy that claimed the lives of both janitors and powerful CEOs. How much is a life worth? he avoids going into this subject in depth, preferring to take the most conventional paths of his kind, towards the human emotional drama. From this place, it is a story that is seen with pleasure and that its good performers accompany with commitment to its characters.

Come from afar / Those who come from far

This filming of the famous Broadway musical, which returned to the scene after the pandemic, draws on the investigative work of its director, Christopher Ashley and his crew, on what happened on a small island in Canada, Newfoundland. When, on September 11, 2001, 38 planes, from a wide variety of countries, landed at its small airport, they were diverted from their routes when it was decided to cancel the aviation activity.

Seven thousand passengers and a few animals got off these planes. Almost doubling the population of the island, were received and accommodated by the inhabitants, establishing links of accelerated intensity as distant spectators of what was happening. The friendships that were forged there brought many of them back ten years later. And about that experience in ‘rock’, as its locals call the island, this was written, the longest-running Canadian musical on Broadway, nominated for awards and can now be seen around the world ( Apple TV).