Mostly dramatised, mixed in with some archive footage and interviews with survivors / relatives, this account of 11th September 2001 is a deeply affecting film that is honest, upsetting and dramatic in equal measure. The film follows the stories of a few people from inside both towers, some who survived, some who did not. While several sequences involving selfless bravery (specifically Harry's and Frank's tales) fill you with a sense that the human race may not be all that bad, what is really moving is the interviews with the survivors, most of whom feel guilty at surviving, and a few who even insist they are cowards because they escaped the WTC's collapse while others elected to remain behind to save lives. Dramatising such a stunningly traumatic event will always be difficult, but this film makes the right choice by mixing it with interview footage. If there is one grumble to be made, it is that Terence Stamp's narration seems impersonal and sets the wrong tone throughout.
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dogatemyhomework7 September 2006
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benoit-311 September 2006I'm watching this documentary reconstruction on the French CBC (Radio-Canada) in Toronto. It is the French translation (narrator: Jean Reno) of the British BBC film that has just been shown in England a few days ago. It is overwhelming. It successfully collages a lot of the information available from the survivors of the Twin Towers in a "Night to Remember"-like film, mixing the testimony of survivors and relatives of survivors with recreations of their escape or entrapment stories, except that what took several decades of research to do for the "Titanic" has been put together in only five years. The rival French chain TVA is showing a film about Flight 93 and CBC Newsworld has a docu called "The Falling Man". The only American chain showing anything special about September 11 is ABC ("The Path to 9/11"). Weird. Doesn't anyone want to know or would it have been too much for most people? I also notice "TV Guide" deals with this 5-year old event as if it never happened. I admit watching this film is nerve-wracking and not for the faint of heart. On the plus side, the amazement at the technical achievement in simple story-telling, involving many devices like 3-D plans and CGI recreations of many interiors gradually replaces the natural horror that one might feel at this subject. The heroism and the tragedy of the characters, victims and survivors alike, come through in a dignified and affecting manner, as does the retelling of what can only be termed miracles.
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get_yer_irish_up15 January 2021This was very well done although the actors constantly coughing became annoying and made it hard to watch after awhile