Fictions and documentaries 20 years after the attacks that shook the world – Télam

The world had not been the same since the morning of September 11, 2001. From the moment American Airlines Flight 11 landed at 8.46am in the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan – triggering an attack in a chain that Continue with the crash of United’s 175 on the south tower of the same complex and American’s 77 on the Pentagon – the human and geopolitical impact has been immense. So gigantic that its sequelae in all fields continue to this day (Just look at the current situation in Afghanistan).

A few days after the 20th anniversary of the attacks (a fourth suicide bombing which was to hit the White House or the Capitol did not reach its destination because the passengers confronted the hijackers and brought down the United 93 before d ‘hit the target), Netflix has taken the lead and in the last few hours two new approaches – one from fiction and the other from documentary – to these tragic events which have left nearly 3,000 dead and more than 25,000 injured.

“How much is life worth?”

“How much is a life worth?”

“Worth “- as its synthetic original title) – is a film by Sara Colangelo which, although it has a brief introduction in which it is aware of air attacks, focuses on the (real) story of Kenneth Feinberg (excellent interpretation of Michael keaton), a prominent lawyer and university professor whose specialty was mediating financial compensation cases in the event of a person’s death. The problem is, in the case of the Twin Towers, 2,996 died and, having faced lawsuits from individual millionaires, the Treasury in particular and the economy of the United States as a whole would have literally gone bankrupt.

Lead a team of lawyers (Feinberg’s main collaborator is played by Amy ryan), the protagonist must conceive in a few months a formula to determine how much is worth a life and then get the vast majority to accept it. The premise may seem a bit dry, abstract and even cynical at first, especially under such circumstances, but the director of “Little Accidents” and “The Kindergarten Teacher” goes from the legal and the arithmetic to the intimate when the protagonist (an obsessive of cold numbers and inviolable paragraphs) finds himself in the various interviews with the wives (or lovers) of the victims and begins to change his gaze.

The “shark” lawyers representing millionaire families and that, of course, they demand compensation according to what the heads of multinational companies are worth, even in the case of a young man who, despite having been in a relationship with another man for many years, when he died , he runs the risk of not receiving a single dollar, as the victim’s conservative parents not only question this relationship but even deny that it even existed. Without papers or laws to protect him, we know, the state can neither recognize nor guarantee the rights of individuals or minorities.

Scenes between Michael Keaton’s Feinberg (“Batman”, “Birdman”, “Front Page”) and Charles Wolfe (Stanley Tucci), a lawyer who lost his wife in the attacks and it becomes a reference for most of the relatives of the victim, they are anthology. It is that in their many times opposing visions of issues and relationships, the tensions and contradictions of a film are exposed and synthesized which at first can be a bit boring, but this ends up moving without low blows, with appreciated austerity and nobility.

“Tipping point”

Netflix also released “Tipping Point: 9/11 and the Fight Against Terrorism” this week. documentary series of five parts of one hour each in which, here, every detail of the attacks is reconstructed with imposing precision (there are many unpublished archives, testimonies of survivors, audio recordings of planes, control towers and security agencies).

But it’s not just that (which is not a little): famous director and producer Brian Knappenberger also offers a timeline that dates back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 to understand the background and context in which the attacks occurred, as well as the no less bloody consequences: the war on terror, plus precisely against Al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKT8G0olYZw

“Tipping point”

With a look sometimes enough questioning the policy of the president of the time of George W. Bush, an intricate puzzle screen is displayed with the changing tables of the different decades, which include various ethnic groups, tribes and factions, moderate Islamists and extremist jihadists, several leaders, politicians and military involved in a dispute not only military but also economic and religious .

9/11 in other works

Both in “How Much Is Life Worth?” as in “Tourning point: 9/11 and the fight against terrorism” refers to the case of the aforementioned United Flight 93 which did not reach its destination thanks to the riot of the passengers and, in this sense, it is good to recall in this journey 20 years after the events, there are two films about these events of civil heroism which were released almost simultaneously in 2006: “Flight 93” (“United 93”), by Paul Greengrass (available on HBO Max, Netflix and Movistar Play); and “Flight 93”, by Peter Markle.

In any case, these aren’t the only films related to the events of 2001 to pick up these days: on Netflix and Movistar Play you can also see “The twin towers” (“World Trade Center”), which Oliver Stone shot in 2006 with Nicolas Cage and Maria Bello; “Hope lives in me” (“Reign Over Me”, 2007), with Adam Sandler as a dentist turned into a banshee after losing his family on one of the flights on September 11 (Movistar Play); and “The darkest night” (“Zero Dark Thirty”, 2012), by the talented Kathryn Bigelow, who has been reconstructing the hunt for Osama Bin Laden for over a decade (it’s on Netflix and Movistar Play). And there are many others who also touch (sometimes tangentially) life stories related to this turning point in American history.

“The darkest night”

For their part, the documentary they deserve to be mentioned “In the shadow of the Towers: September 11 in Stuyvesant” (HBO), based on interviews with eight New Yorkers (then teenagers) studying at Stuyvesant Public High School, located four blocks from the World Trade Center; “What Happened on September 11” (2019), a very educational film for the whole family directed by Amy Schatz (Movistar Play); and “Fahrenheit 9/11”, the explosive essay by Michael Moore (available on YouTube) which harshly and cruelly questions the action of his government and which won him nothing less than the Palme d’Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.