Rebirth
(Oscilloscope Set)/Remembering 9/11
(Inception Media)/September 11: Memorial
Edition (History Channel Set/2011 DVDs)
Picture:
C+/C/C Sound: C+ Extras: B+/D/C+ Documentaries: B/C+/B-
Too much
is being said about the events of 9/11/01 except some of the most important
things and other things needed to be said need to be saved for another time
(though we’ll reject the majority of the conspiracy theorists) so any new title
on the subject after a decade had better offer something new and progressive. The following DVD releases show the range on
that.
The best
is a double DVD set called Rebirth from
Oscilloscope that includes a new documentary that follows five people’s lives
since the horrific events of that day and how their changes are untold stories
that still reflect the day in microcosm without being minimalist or phony. The stories are painful and you wonder why we
have not heard more about these people, but the polite idea is that these are untold
stories too painful to tell until now.
There is the argument that the mainstream media and certain political
forces want us to forget or have some sick, distorted, false memory and reason
for remembering, but that’s another essay.
Director Jim
Whitaker has created one of the best documentaries on the subject, yet it is
still somehow topped by the bonus program here entitled his massive project
starting 6 months after the attacks where he set up several 35mm film cameras
with special time-lapse configurations to start to capture the cleaning up and
rising again of the area hit. A 90+
minutes version of the footage is edited here and withy the fewest words, may
say the very most about what really happened.
Some footage is at normal sound speed with sound, but combined with the
time lapse footage (here at 1.33 X 1 and sometimes letterboxed 1.78 X 1) is the
most powerful portrait of Ground Zero to date and this is only a sample of all
the footage shot and still being shot as you read this. A featurette called 14 Cameras, 24 Hours
shows how he set this up.
This is a
landmark piece of work in progress and is a must see for anyone serious about
understanding the events and only visiting Ground Zero could be more
powerful. Whittaker and Director of
Photography Thomas Lappin do an audio commentary on the main feature.
Back in
the 1960s, Andy Warhol was famous for making silent movies that were long, but
shot events in real time like Sleep
(8 hours long) and Empire (even
longer showing footage shot at the top of the Empire State Building) that were
among such experimental films that people thought was a waste of time, but they
make the point that the only way to show an event in real time is to show them
at the full length of that time, which even documentaries do not do. Whittaker and company have taken this
innovation and done something amazing with it in the same city. Nice to see the spirit and ideas of Warhol
and his Factory are alive and well, especially when we need them now more than
ever.
The
simplest is Remembering 9/11
(Inception Media) that is a basic 72 minutes long recap of the last decade’s
events. This is good but most the
releases is what we have seen before and though it is good, it did not go as
far as I would have liked and seems dated as compared to Rebirth. There are no extras.
Also
seeming slight behind the ball is September
11: Memorial Edition from the History Channel that includes two older 1.33
X 1 shows: Hotel Ground Zero and The Miracle Of Stairway 8 and the
letterboxed 1.78 X 1 The Days The Towers Fell.
The bonus program on DVD 2 is Witness
To 9/11, which is a companion to the also-included 102 Minutes That Changed America. This a therefore a compilation and a richer
one, but I wanted more and as good and respectable as the three are (the Dolby
Digital 2.0 Stereo on all three are fine), there is much more to say and we’ll
hopefully see and hear more in the near future as we just begin to grapple with
what really happened.
- Nicholas Sheffo
