In this offering from the fecund imagination of Oliver Stone there is no hyperbole, no bombast, and no vast paranoid conspiracy. Instead, with World Trade Center, he has turned his considerable gifts, and using actual events, to recreate what it was like to be at Ground Zero, literally and figuratively, on the day that everything changed. His subtlety in framing that day with the story of two wives waiting for word on the fate of their husbands packs more of an emotional punch of, say, the oft repeated clip of the Zapruder film in JFK, or any of the flash and dazzle of his other efforts. This isn’t just a fitting tribute to the specific people involved, it’s also a celebration of grace under pressure, and what is worth preserving from the chaos.
The particulars are a squad of Port Authority cops led by John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage), who go into the WTC with little more than borrowed equipment, guts, and conflicting information about what is happening. Rumors have both buildings being hit by planes, or only one, the Pentagon hit by a missile and Israel nuked out of existence. There is no time to sort it out, only to react to the moment, including the one when the building they are in begins to fall and John, taking several beats for that fact to sink in, orders them all into an elevator shaft as their best chance of survival. There is a roar and then silence and a black screen. They are trapped 20 feet below the surface, pinned in place, slowly dying from their injuries, and keeping each other from slipping into unconsciousness with tales of their families, reminiscences of favorite television shows, and regrets about not smiling more.
Visually, this ranks with Stone’s best work. There are small details that jolt with their newness and add to the palpable sense of immediacy. There is not just the rain of paper from a million newsreels, there is John, as he goes into the WTC, watching without time to stop to something raining from the sky that melts tires on contact, and what seems like only minutes later, the sound of the building itself beginning to buckle over his head. As for the planes that slam into the buildings, all that is shown is an ominous, plane-shaped shadow sliding across a building and then a distant booming sound.
The action, above and below ground in neatly tied together with contrasts that have odd correspondences, the men trapped below the concourse waiting for rescue shown in close-ups that become tighter as the time passes, while their families above ground have too much space in which to roam aimlessly waiting for word, people in both places trying to maintain a calm that can only be simulated for the sake of those around them. There is a lack of solid facts, the families of their loved ones’ fate, the men of anything that is happening above ground. The waiting above ground for the phone to ring with bad news, and below ground for a new collapse to finish them off. Stone brings the spiritual into play as well, splicing in color saturated flashbacks that plays as shared memories between husband and wife, and a divine visitation or a hallucination, depending on one’s predilections, that has a singularly useful icon in hand. The performances, too, from the large cast, are subtle but powerful, underscoring the zeitgeist of that day, the disbelief in the face of hard reality. From the ex-marine who grimly puts his uniform back on and marches into Ground Zero to help, to the wives (Mario Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal), who teeter between tough and frantic, between hope and despair while still tending to parents and kids.
In the background, incessantly, clips of the live coverage of that day play as the background to action above ground. Inevitably, there is Rudy Guiliani saying the line that best summed up the feeling of that day, that the number of casualties, at that point still unknown, would be too great to bear. WORLD TRADE CENTER takes the abstract of casualties and turns them into dearly loved and irreplaceable flesh and blood. Far from the usual screed, here is a paean to the absolute miracle that is every human life.
Your Thoughts?