Understated docu-drama following the men who planned and carried out the attacks of 9/11
"When the world talks about the men who carried out this holy operation they will be talking about the men who changed the course of history," exclaims a senior Al Qaeda member in this fictional docu-drama from director Antonia Bird. Charting the planning and execution of the World Trade Center attacks by a handful of Muslim fundamentalists led by Mohamed Atta (Kamel), The Hamburg Cell is a devastatingly powerful work that puts faces and personalities to the men who carried out the attacks against the US on the fateful morning of September 11th.
Based on a wide range of documentary evidence, from court transcriptions to video footage, this simmering yet understated little movie focuses on Lebanese student Ziad Jarrah (Saleh) as he's transformed from rich-boy student at the University of Applied Science in Hamburg to jihadist hijacker of United Airlines flight 93 (which crashed en route to the White House shortly after simultaneous attacks struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon).
It's a difficult journey. Immersing us in the secretive, clandestine world of these fundamentalists as they indoctrinate new recruits, train at terrorist camps in Afghanistan and learn to fly at an aviation school in Florida, Bird forces a disturbing intimacy with men destined to become mass murderers.
To humanise the terrorists, The Hamburg Cell deliberately focuses on Jarrah, the weakest link of the group, whose reservations about the jihadist cause are eventually swept away. Rather than styling him as some victim of brainwashing, screenwriters Ronan Bennett and Alice Pearman delicately suggest the powerful lure of infatuation with a self-justifying cause while never losing sight of the fact that, for the hijackers, the jihad is not a first strike on America, but a counter strike in an anti-Muslim war that is being waged throughout Bosnia, Chechnya, Indonesia, Iraq and Palestine.
Claustrophobically shot and making good use of CCTV and superimposed titles to give the sense of the covert nature of the cell's activities, Bird's film refuses to release us from our intimate experience of the jihadists' world. It's a strictly non-partisan film that adamantly refuses to moralise. That will undoubtedly cause significant controversy among those who would rather condemn these men as pure evil. Rather, what this intelligent drama asks us to do is recognise their motivation - not to judge them, but to address the injustices (in particular the Palestinian crisis) that drives such heinous and misguided actions.
Verdict Bravely understated, The Hamburg Cell makes a bold attempt to humanise the terrorists behind the events of 9/11. Its studied detachment on such an emotive issue is impressive.
