Coming up on 20 years after the September 11th terrorist attacks, this "9/11" documentary remains difficult to watch despite everyone who was at the age of remembering then and continues to be to this day can recall where they were and has seen over and over again footage from that day played on television, recreated in movies and related elsewhere. In some ways, or for some, it may be worse now, because now we know how much the world and our lives have changed as a result. There's already a sense of that here with the firemen interviewees expressing survivor's guilt, from a firehouse that didn't lose one fireman, and otherwise reflecting on then-recent events. Seeing their discouragement and exhaustion from rescue and recovery efforts becomes especially disheartening with hindsight of the respiratory and other ill-health effects from breathing in the debris from Ground Zero and surviving a traumatic event.
This documentary was an unfortunate scoop for the filmmakers, especially the French brothers Jules and Gédéon Naudet whose separation at Ground Zero adds much of the intimate personal drama to the already horrific events. Along with James Halon, they originally set out to videotape a probationary fireman adjusting to his new job at a Manhattan firehouse, for which they had already been following for months his rather boring experiences--having as of September 10th not even received a call for a significant fire. Judging by the poor video quality, especially on DVD at 480i or whatever resolution on a 4K TV, which is how I viewed it, it doesn't look like this original premise was ever intended for more than a local human-interest program. Yet, another dull, routine call that Jules rode along on only to practice his camerawork and collect B-roll wound up being the best recorded angle, of reportedly only three total, and which even if you haven't seen this documentary, you've probably seen this shot elsewhere, of the first plane hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Their movie and the world would never be the same.
There's considerable discretion evidenced here even in recording such a tragedy. Jules mentions how people are on fire out of frame to his right and for which he refuses to film upon his arrival at the lobby of Tower 1. It reminds me of what's probably the first disaster film ever recorded, "The Launch of H. M. S. Albion" (1898), where one of England's first filmmakers, Robert W. Paul, filmed the rescue efforts immediately after the battleship upon entering the Thames swept spectators in with it, killings dozens. One doesn't see anything explicitly graphic in the way of corpses in that film, at least as far as I can tell, but it was nonetheless of some controversy in its day, as largely made hay of by Paul's competitor and former partner Birt Acres, who reportedly refused to show his own footage of the moment the disaster occurred. We still see these filmmaking ethical concerns playing out over a hundred years later.
In another instance in this documentary, although we hear repeatedly the sounds of people falling to their deaths, there's never a cut here to show them, and there is some insertion here of others' footage, to provide more distant views, such as the towers collapsing, because the Naudet brothers were at the scene, sometimes running for their lives. Indeed, the only casualty that the picture focuses on for a considerable time is that of the firefighter chaplain, and that's because Jules uses his camera light to help recover his body after parts of Tower 2 fell on them in its collapse. One may also wonder about the decision to include a bit of slow-motion shots, classical music and what looks like maybe 16mm film for brief interludes, but if ever a subject deserved a beat be taken--a moment to reflect, this is it.
More than only haunting imagery, however, or another documentary, this is primary source material, a first-person account of history when it happened. (The DVD doesn't even include the reported original introduction from Robert De Niro.) It's all the more valuable for it--even more so than, say, covering perhaps the most world-altering event of the century since in something such as "Totally Under Control" (2020). The epicenter here is much clearer, and the filmmakers were already there.
This documentary was an unfortunate scoop for the filmmakers, especially the French brothers Jules and Gédéon Naudet whose separation at Ground Zero adds much of the intimate personal drama to the already horrific events. Along with James Halon, they originally set out to videotape a probationary fireman adjusting to his new job at a Manhattan firehouse, for which they had already been following for months his rather boring experiences--having as of September 10th not even received a call for a significant fire. Judging by the poor video quality, especially on DVD at 480i or whatever resolution on a 4K TV, which is how I viewed it, it doesn't look like this original premise was ever intended for more than a local human-interest program. Yet, another dull, routine call that Jules rode along on only to practice his camerawork and collect B-roll wound up being the best recorded angle, of reportedly only three total, and which even if you haven't seen this documentary, you've probably seen this shot elsewhere, of the first plane hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Their movie and the world would never be the same.
There's considerable discretion evidenced here even in recording such a tragedy. Jules mentions how people are on fire out of frame to his right and for which he refuses to film upon his arrival at the lobby of Tower 1. It reminds me of what's probably the first disaster film ever recorded, "The Launch of H. M. S. Albion" (1898), where one of England's first filmmakers, Robert W. Paul, filmed the rescue efforts immediately after the battleship upon entering the Thames swept spectators in with it, killings dozens. One doesn't see anything explicitly graphic in the way of corpses in that film, at least as far as I can tell, but it was nonetheless of some controversy in its day, as largely made hay of by Paul's competitor and former partner Birt Acres, who reportedly refused to show his own footage of the moment the disaster occurred. We still see these filmmaking ethical concerns playing out over a hundred years later.
In another instance in this documentary, although we hear repeatedly the sounds of people falling to their deaths, there's never a cut here to show them, and there is some insertion here of others' footage, to provide more distant views, such as the towers collapsing, because the Naudet brothers were at the scene, sometimes running for their lives. Indeed, the only casualty that the picture focuses on for a considerable time is that of the firefighter chaplain, and that's because Jules uses his camera light to help recover his body after parts of Tower 2 fell on them in its collapse. One may also wonder about the decision to include a bit of slow-motion shots, classical music and what looks like maybe 16mm film for brief interludes, but if ever a subject deserved a beat be taken--a moment to reflect, this is it.
More than only haunting imagery, however, or another documentary, this is primary source material, a first-person account of history when it happened. (The DVD doesn't even include the reported original introduction from Robert De Niro.) It's all the more valuable for it--even more so than, say, covering perhaps the most world-altering event of the century since in something such as "Totally Under Control" (2020). The epicenter here is much clearer, and the filmmakers were already there.