By Tony Rutherford
Huntington, WV — Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” conveys two seemingly contradictory messages with ease: 9/11 released hell on the planet and concurrently forced people to remember that they must take care of each other.
The fateful Tuesday in New York City (and elsewhere) began with alarm clocks ringing, dogs taken for walks, the sun rising, and the commute to work. Police and fire answered roll calls and heard a traditional “be careful out there and watch your backs.” Slowly the impact of the events unfolds through the mouths of first responders, their families and ordinary people trapped in an extraordinary event.
“What schmuck would fly a plane into the World Trade Center,” a cop questions, “Maybe they ran out of gas.” His quandary reflects no disrespect, just disbelief. Shortly, another first responder would speculate, “The world’s coming to an end today.”
Two Port Authority police officers — John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno — played by Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena scurry with other volunteers to the lower shopping concourse between WTC I and II. As they prepare to enter the lower level of one of the skyscrapers, the first tower collapses, trapping them in a mass of rubble ranging from steel and pipes to concrete and pulverized dust.
For most of the film, they will remain excruciatingly positioned talking heads unable to move more than an arm or a neck. Their plight resembles two miners’ trapped awaiting (“Is anybody there?”) help from above. Glimpses of light and chattering between the two men keep them conscious despite intense pain and the fear that by going to sleep, you might not awaken in this world.
Structurally, Stone shifts perspectives throughout — the two men trapped in the rubble, the efforts of others to locate survivors, the family members huddled together glued to TV news that repeats the same items repeatedly, and seemingly random individuals caught in the unleash of evil.
The director intentionally avoids and shrouds the pre-mortally wounded Twin Towers from viewers. His cityscapes and skylines of New York City depict the Statue of Liberty, Midtown Manhattan, tunnels and bridges, before brief glimpses of the intact Towers standing in the foggy mist of sunrise. When the planes strike, he shows the damage from television reports. Only as the fire and police respond to the thousands of sheets of paper, does he depict the now immortal images of the gashes in the towers.
As the police approach to the towers from the lower concourse, the criticalness of the circumstances heightens. Now Stone shows walking, bloodied survivors moving away from the area. He avoids graphic atrocities. Intense yet strangely distant, Stone’s “World Trade Center” respectfully narrows the scope of America’s day of Hell as seen through the eyes of those who still have a trickle of hope. Although there are deaths, the story surges dynamically into the crypt 20 to 30 feet below the surface where the two men exchange conversations of endurance which assist in warding off the dreaded uncertainty of pain free sleep from which they might not reawaken.
Need I neglect the repeated clanking and falling of debris and the erupting of flash fires serves to maintain hyperventilation worries for the two trapped officers.
Certainly, there’s a feel good rush that two guys made it. And, the Marine drawn at church to go to Ground Zero and volunteer humbles us all about listening to a little voice down deep in the pit of our stomach.
Of course, “WTC” has an ironic undertow that sometimes occurs from tragedy i.e. the good that (pardon the pun) flows to the surface. Why do we wait until the worst of times to think about “taking care of each other?” It seems the desire for strong personal independence has smothered the principles of loving each other as thyself, getting to know the neighbors, and helping out during other than desperate times. In fact, the independence movement has made it a personal weakness to ask for help, rather than recognition that we all have different talents and together we made a better home, community, city and world.
As a couple of the heroes admit, “The only thing I’m good at is helping people.” Too bad, so many people feel they lessen themselves to rely on another, instead of randomly returning the favor by helping a stranger in need?
For all the pithy “where’d the buildings go?” or the lament that “I don’t remember the last thing I said to my wife this morning,” the valor rises from the brothers, friends, neighbors, and strangers who just wanted to help. All came to the chaos of utter hell to fight to save the lives of people they did not know simply because it was, in Stone’s words, “the right thing to do.”
Does it take a terrorist attack or the Christmas season to inspire us selfish humans to assist someone in need for the next day you may be the one needing a kind hand to help you?
Tony Rutherford covers the entertainment scene for Graffiti and Huntington News Network.
GUEST COMMENTARY: Trouble in Uzbekistan
Posted by kinchendavid on August 11, 2006
By Tom Proebsting
Uzbekistan, a prolific gold-mining and cotton-producing nation, is best known for two of its Islamic cities: Samarkand and Bukhara. Samarkand is well-renowned for its ancient dazzling architecture. Bukhara was the seat of Muslim scholarship during the tenth century, astonishing the civilized world with its expertise in the physical sciences and the arts.
Uzbekistan, with a population of 26 million people, is Central Asia’s most populous country. It also boasts one of the region’s longest-running dictators, Islam Karimov, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Uzbekistan has a Soviet-style government: the government owns the nation’s oil reserves, the state plans and controls the economy, there is not much private ownership or foreign investment, and it is a police state. This approach has led to widespread corruption, poverty, unemployment, difficulties in currency conversion, and mass fear.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations, and the BBC, among others, have reported human rights abuses that have systematically been practiced in Uzbekistan. Citizens have been arrested, put on trial, and given long sentences. Others have been tortured or have disappeared; relatives of accused citizens are harassed; and the accused and families are forced out of their jobs. Freedom of the press, free speech, the right to privacy, the right to assemble and petition the government, and freedom of religion are non-existent.
Islamic unrest is an issue in Uzbekistan as many of its poor males see no other way out of poverty and hopelessness. In 1995, the state-sanctioned Muslim authority, the Muftiat, traveled from mosque to mosque throughout the country keeping or expelling Imans at will. Some Muslim leaders simply disappeared. Some of the population became radical, secured ties to al-Qaeda and made plans to change Uzbekistan. Peace was no longer an option for the country.
In 1999, bombs went off in the capital city of Tashkent. Sixteen were killed and 128 injured. Hundreds, possibly thousands, were arrested not only in Uzbekistan, but in other Central Asian nations that the perpetrators had fled to. Later that year, 22 men went on trial.
In 2005, protesters took over government buildings in Andijan and afterwards an allegedly peaceful crowd gathered in the main square in support of the takeover. Troops began shooting into the crowd and by the time the massacre ended, the government claimed 187 had died. However, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a local doctor claimed up to 1000 had died from the firefight-including women and children. Twenty-three businessmen went on trial.
The two trials had eerie similarities. In 1999, the accused, one by one, admitted that they intended to destabilize the republic and kill President Karimov. The men had been trained in Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. Their ultimate goal was to establish an Islamic government in Uzbekistan.
A few months after the Andijan massacre in 2005, the first trial consisted of 15 men who pled guilty to charges brought by Deputy Prosecuting General Anvar Navieb. He claimed the accused admitted association with Hibz ut-Tahrir, an extremist organization which advocates an Islamic state for Central Asia and a caliphate from Morocco to Pakistan.
Both trials resulted in lengthy prison sentences for the accused. It is possible the accused were tortured until they agreed to confess to their crimes. On the other hand, Hibz ut-Tahrir has the goal of a Middle East (and beyond) caliphate, as does Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and the Iranian nation. Either all of the accused in both trials were tortured and forced to lie under duress or some of them were telling the truth.
The eyes of the world are on President Karimov. Is he overreacting to a few minor incidents, including bombings in 2004? Or is he attempting to plug up a much bigger problem?
If the accused are being honest about plans for an eventual caliphate in the oil-rich region, the world has a serious problem.
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Tom Proebsting is a writer and blogger in Missouri. Tom Proebsting, 823 N. Ault St. Moberly, MO 65270
e-mail: truthprobe777@yahoo.com
Proebsting invites comments. Reply to: http://truthprobe.blogspot.com
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