Is Hollywood finally over 9/11?

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Is Hollywood finally over 9/11?
Tweet Topic Started: Apr 26 2010, 03:03 PM (167 Views)
shure	Apr 26 2010, 03:03 PM Post #1
Administrator Posts: 6,257 Group: Administrator Member #1 Joined: Feb 13, 2008	Is Hollywood finally over 9/11? From the angry Fahrenheit 9/11 to the depressing Hamburg Cell, films about September 11 have journeyed through the five stages of grief. Now with weepies Dear John and Remember Me, the movies have come to terms with the defining event of our age Posted by Neil Smith Tuesday 30 March 2010 10.02 BST http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/mar/30/hollywood-september-11-films The bargaining stage ... A still from Paul Greengrass's 2006 film, United 93. Photograph: Reuters/Jonathan Olley/Universal Studios Everything is peachy at the beginning of Dear John, Lasse Hallstrom's new weepie about a soldier's star-crossed romance with a college student. That's because it's spring 2001, a time when the idea of hijacked planes slamming into the twin towers was as far-fetched as a black president or airport body scans. Midway through the film, of course, the planes finally hit, forcing Channing Tatum to leave Amanda Seyfried and do his bit for God and country. That's right, people. In just nine years, the defining event of our age has become the reason why the guy from Step Up can't be with the girl from Mamma Mia! According to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's book On Death and Dying, the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. By and large Hollywood seems to have gone through something similar with regards to 9/11. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy nobody dared address the event itself; it was too raw, too seismic, too hard to grasp in its entirety. The best the movies could do was to acknowledge its impact, in films like The Guys (in which journalist Sigourney Weaver helped fire captain Anthony LaPaglia pen eulogies for his fallen comrades) or The 25th Hour (which opened with shots of the towers of light that marked the half-year anniversary in 2002). If that was Tinseltown in denial, it took Michael Moore to provide the anger in his 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which saw the portly film-maker accusing Bush and his cronies of turning the tragedy to their own advantage. In time, however, thoughts turned to how that same tragedy could be dramatised successfully – the bargaining stage, if you will. No film could hope to convey its full enormity, and any that attempted to were sure to be accused of naivety or crassness. It was reasoned, though, that individual displays of heroism and sacrifice could act as metaphors for the larger whole, be it the passengers of the fourth plane who fought back against the hijackers – commemorated in United 93 by Paul Greengrass – or the police officers trapped in the rubble whose ordeal Oliver Stone recreated in World Trade Center. Dramatic reconstruction – also used in Antonia Bird's Hamburg Cell, a film about the hijackers themselves – served a purpose, but it could also be a gruelling depressant. So were the slew of Iraq and Afghanistan films which surfaced in 9/11's aftermath (Stop-Loss, Rendition, In the Valley of Elah) – downbeat affairs with serious agendas which left both critics and audiences cold. Why pay to watch movies about the war on terror when you could see Jack Bauer win it at home for nothing? More importantly, what could the likes of Lions for Lambs and The Kingdom tell us we didn't already know? Perhaps this explains why Hollywood has jumped forward to acceptance, greenlighting films which use 9/11 as a dramatic device in fictional narratives capable of having the happy ending real life can't always provide. Watch the trailer for Dear John http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2010/apr/06/dear-john-film-trailer Reign Over Me, a buddy picture from 2007 in which Don Cheadle nursed Adam Sandler's bereaved husband through his loss, was criticised by some for making the September 11 attacks a mere plot point. If Dear John is anything to go by, though, we should probably get used to it. Last week came news that Richard Gere and Keira Knightley are to play father and daughter in The Emperor's Children, adapted from Claire Messud's novel about New Yorkers before and after 9/11. This week, meanwhile, sees the release of Remember Me, in which Robert Pattinson shows love means never having to say you're sorry for an exploitative ending.



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