When a Movie is More than a Movie

Thoughts on Oliver Stone's World Trade Center.

[Editor's Note: I'm still on vacation, while I'm away here's something for you to think about.]

By Jeff Hughes

Hello all -

I've basically quit as a movie critic the last few years but I saw WORLD TRADE CENTER yesterday.

First, let me make a few quick points:

1. September 11th - to most of this country - was a "televised event." The story was broke to them by a friend's phone call or a CNN Alert and then they spent the next few days in front of their television watching the pinnacle of human drama unfold.

2. To the people in New York City and its surroundings at the time, it has become so many different things. Noah remembers how beautiful the day was. My uncle remembers a cloud of smoke from the New Jersey Turnpike. I vividly remember soot-covered businessmen running into the deli under our building and slamming 40s of beer, faces flooded with tears.

3. To people in those buildings or those who lost love ones, it is still an unspeakable event.

For me, more than anything else, the days after were worse than the day itself and have haunted me so terribly that I've stil never been to Ground Zero. I'm not interested. I don't think it would be cathartic.

And using myself and the eleven others in my theatre as an example, I'd have to say there is no possible way this country is ready for Oliver Stone's WORLD TRADE CENTER. Because I wasn't and I knew it immediately.

Now, for the moviegoers out there. It's beautifully shot and the score is quiet and subtle. But this isn't a movie. This is history reaching into your stomach and tearing you apart. I didn't cry at WTC the way people cry at movies. I cried at WTC the way people cry at life, more appropriately, at death. I felt everything all over again and perhaps more viscerally than the first time. You feel the tears coming from inside and you can't keep them in. I took two breaks during the movie. Not for a drink or a piss but to catch my breath. To remember things were okay. I wasn't alone. No one in the theatre I was in made it all the way through and two gentlemen, who were clearly cops, looked like they'd been through a way by the time it was over.

Movies were very important to me on the Friday after 9/11, when the AMC at Union Square opened its doors for free all day. Then I walked back to my Lafayette Street dorm, covering my face with my hand because the smell in the air was so thick it felt like it was pushing down on your shoulders. All of that came back to me in the last row at the Lincoln Square Loews yesterday and I didn't want it back. My mistake. I shouldn't have bought the ticket. I thought I was ready, five years later.

I wasn't.

And I'm not exactly the most sensitive cat out there.

If I'm not ready, I doubt others will be. But give Oliver Stone credit. He wanted to bring us back to a place and time. He did it. I just didn't want to go.

Jeff Hughes is a New Jerseyan living in New York. He's also a playwright, critic, Bears fan and blogger at Da' Bears Blog.

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2004: The Year in Movies

By Jeff Hughes

I’m really tired of modern movie critics. When do they hold that meeting in some abandoned warehouse, when Roger Ebert stands in the shadows puffing a cigarette and A.O. Scott knocks on the front door, armed with the password – “Self-Important.� When do these middle-aged white people (mostly men) decide to proclaim some new Hollywood mediocrity a masterpiece? And why – OH GOD WHY – is this year’s choice Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby? Not just one – but two overblown, overwrought dishonest movies in one.

I’m trying to stay positive.

Trying.

The top ten films of 2004, according to me: (note: I don’t write much about them. If you’re really interested, watch them. If you hate them, tell me.)

10. The Five Obstructions

Director Lars von Trier challenges avant-garde filmmaker Jorgen Leth to remake his classic, The Perfect Human. It’s cinema as psycho-therapy.

09. Vera Drake

Mike Leigh is the closest thing the cinema has to a brilliant dramatist. Vera is a politically fervent film without the imbalance of politically subjectivity.

08. The Manchurian Candidate

Fully expecting (and frankly hoping) to despise this remake by the overrated Jonathan Demme, I was shocked to find it not only the most entertaining Hollywood film of the year, but also the most interesting remake we’re ever likely to have. (That doesn’t mean we need any more people to try.)

07. Before Sunset

They talk and they talk and they talk…then they talk more. Then it ends. And it’s all lovely. Richard Linklater may not be the most visually interesting around but he has the best ear for dialogue since Woody Allen was at his peak.

06. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Here’s a conversation had after a mid-film brawl between rivaling news teams:

Ron: Boy that escalated quickly... I mean, that really got out of hand fast!

Champ: It jumped up a notch!

Ron: It did, didn't it?

Brick: Yeah, I stabbed a man in the heart!

Ron: I saw that! Brick killed a guy! Did you throw a trident?

Brick: Yeah, there were horses, and a man on fire, and I killed a guy with a trident!

Ron: Brick, I've been meaning to talk to you about that. You should find yourself a safe house or a relative close by. Lay low for a while, because you're probably wanted for murder.

Still makes me laugh…

05. The Assassination of Richard Nixon

I think I’m going to be in the minority on this one but Sean Penn gives one of the greatest performances I have ever seen. Penn’s Sam Bicke is the incarnation of American self-doubt in the immediate post-Watergate era, an analysis of what happens when the American Dream seems unattainable.

04. Friday Night Lights

Man, director Peter Berg really blew this one out of the park (sorry for the sports allusion). It’s the story of one season in the life of a high school football team and it’s wonderfully character-driven. Best scene: showboat tailback, now humbled by an injury to his knee, breaks down with his uncle in the car, “All I know is football.� Earlier in the film, he turns to a reporter who asks how his grades are and says, “The only subject is football.� The film is full of beautiful touches like that.

03. Sideways

The backlash is underway but I’m sticking by Sideways, Alexander Payne’s subtle, funny and touching film about middle-aged drunks discovering themselves in the Napa Valley.

02. Maria Full of Grace

A young, pregnant Columbian girl becomes a drug mule to provide for her unborn child. At times both beautiful and horrifying, the biggest surprise comes in its Emma Lazarus ending.

#1 DOGVILLE

I saw Dogville in the spring. I’m still not sure how to write about it. Lars von Trier’s masterpiece is pointedly anti-American but it’s just as interesting when situated among the other films in his canon. In some ways, it’s a response to his feminist critics of the past decade. Its aesthetic is original and ideology is audacious. A friend asked me, “Isn’t this what all movies should be?� Damn, if only they were.

Films Worth Seeing: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Sea Inside, The Woodsman, Spiderman 2, Mean Girls, Control Room, The Door in the Floor

BUT WAIT! HOPE IS ON THE WAY!
This month, 2005 will save the day. There’s a film about a really fast zebra.

Jeff Hughes is better known as 'the drunk guy' or 'that guy with tasteless humor' in most circles. In this one, he's simply known as the guy who slept on my couch for a month and a half.

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