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S. T. Karnick, editor-in-chief,
American
Outlook magazine,
published by the Hudson
Institute
In 9/11,
filmmakers Gedeon and Jules Naudet wisely do not go over old ground
by telling us what motivated the villains behind the September 11
attacks. Instead, they do something equally valuable: They show
us what makes a hero.
We have already
heard, of course, much about the heroic acts New York City firefighters,
policemen, and emergency crews performed on that day, but just how
they summoned up the courage had never been fully explained —
until now. It is an amazingly simple thing. We see a rookie firefighter
as he impatiently waits several weeks for his first fire and wonders
whether he'll be good enough when the time finally comes. He has
chosen his career in response to a generalized desire to help people.
He has no image of himself as a hero, and this attitude is clearly
pervasive among his fellow firefighters. They see themselves as
just regular guys who want to help people.
But when that
desire puts their own lives in mortal danger, the rookie firefighter,
his fellow crewmembers, and even the filmmakers don't think twice;
they just move forward. They enter a burning building because people
there need their help. The new footage from inside the World Trade
Center doesn't tell us anything original about the events of that
day, but it enables us to see these men up close as they knowingly
charge into a very possibly lethal situation to deliver others from
certain death.
"We sure
didn't feel like heroes," says the rookie late in the film.
"I'm just a person who tries to do good. Just like every other
person in the fire department."
Like a hero.
Stanley Kurtz, fellow, the Hudson
Institute & NRO contributing editor
We're good
at forgetting. I write about the post-Sept. 11 world, supposedly,
yet somehow I'd forgotten. You feel a bit ashamed. The black blotches
mucking up the camera lens stick in my mind. Pollution, desecration.
That's what I kept feeling-that my country had been desecrated.
New York city streets (still somehow themselves even when filled
with gaping horrified people) emptied out and smothered in dead
white ash. That was a desecration. A beautiful wonderful city that
I love killed off. But it wasn't killed off. The Internet can be
a lonely place. So can books and magazines. Something about a firehouse
where men are brothers and joke and eat with each other every night
is the opposite of all that. Soldiers and firemen who live like
brothers seem more able to give their lives to each other —
and to us. You feel a bit ashamed. (There's a siren now just outside
my window.) I'm grateful to be an American. I'm sad for my country.
I'm angry at the people who did this. I wish those men hadn't died.
Evil has its reasons, and yet it is evil still. I want to win this
war.
Robert A. George, editorial writer, New York Post
Considering
that the French are the object of much ridicule from Americans,
it's a supreme irony that film footage from two French cameramen
manages to capture the essence of America on one of its darkest
days.
Jules and Gedeon
Naudet came up with an offbeat idea: Follow rookie New York firefighter
Tony Benetatos of Engine 7, Ladder 1 and see what happens. How could
they know they would end up on the ground level as the Big Apple
sustained a terrorist attack?
So much has
happened since That Day that a reminder was needed. This was a story
of more than just planes and buildings — though Gedeon's camera
was the only one to catch the first plane hitting.
It was a story
of humanity at its most vulnerable and heroic.
It's caught
in the eyes. Jules's camera went from face to face and concentrated
on the eyes of the firefighters as they set up their command center
in the north tower. The awe, puzzlement, and uncertainty in their
eyes spoke far louder than anything verbal could.
Gedeon's camera
also captures the universality of the catastrophe in an unassuming
manner, by zeroing in on the reactions of regular New Yorkers. The
varied accents tell a story themselves: African, Asian, Brooklyn
Irish, they're all there. New York is under attack, but the world
bears witness.
One sympathizes
with the feelings of surviving families, who didn't want this footage
aired at this time, but something that comes through in this film
is that our private emotions no longer belong to us alone.
After the towers
collapse, each brother believes the other is dead. As Gedeon tries
to come to grips with the fact that his brother is likely dead,
he asks each firefighter; most walk by, almost ignoring him, stunned
as they all are. Finally, one of them says, "He's right behind
you." Gedeon turns and the brothers embrace in an intimate,
European way that probably makes the average American feel a bit
awkward. Shortly thereafter, one firefighter says words to the fact
that Gedeon started the day with one brother, but now has many.
Gedeon and Jules had suddenly been accepted into an exclusive fraternity.
It's a perfect
moment.
Rich Lowry, NR editor
It's so strange
to see the inside of the lobby of the north tower again. When the
firefighters show up, horrific things have already happened in that
lobby — a fireball has already crashed through it. But it is
still, relatively, so normal, so solid, so there. Even after the
south tower collapses, briefly plunging the lobby into darkness,
it is still recognizable, still of this world. Then, in a moment,
it will be gone, crushed to nothingness.
Victor Davis
Hanson, in Carnage
and Culture, describes this terrible tipping point in war,
when an army and its equipment — gleaming and orderly —
can in a matter of minutes be scrambled and cut to pieces. This
is exactly what happened to the World Trade Center, so that the
early pictures in 9/11 of the towers still standing are the
ones that now seem surreal and not quite possible.
But, of course,
that was normality. And it took an act of extreme perversity to
change it. The film of the planes hitting the towers, even after
all this time and all the replays, are still gasp-inducing in their
full-frontal, steel-shattering violence. It shouldn't surprise that
an engine of the plane that hit the south tower ended up blocks
away on the other side of the building — but it is still shocking
to see it, another awful reminder of the sheer force with which
the planes slammed into their targets.
The main contribution
of 9/11 is the footage of the looks on the faces of chief
and the other firefighters while inside the north-tower lobby. They
are, by turns, determined, worried, confused, and occasionally startled
by the awful sounds and events all around them. Then, there is the
terrible fact that they — the bravest New York City has to
offer, so determined just to do their job — have to turn and
run for their lives as the tower collapses around them, an achievement
of civilization ground to ashes and dust by civilization's enemies.
John Podhoretz,
columnist, New York Post & NRO contributing editor
This is a true
story: In the 1960s in New York City, thugs would pull fire alarms
even though there was no fire — and when the firefighters arrived,
they'd get ambushed and beaten.
Can you imagine?
Men who make their living running into fire to save others getting
attacked simply for wearing the uniform that indicated they were
public servants there to help?
Watching the
almost unimaginably heroic firefighters do their nightmarish work
in the documentary 9/11, I was filled with a hatred for those
vicious punks from the Lindsay era — a hatred not all that
different from the hatred I feel for Osama bin Laden. And just as
I hope Osama is dead or soon will be, I hope those punks have already
gone to meet their maker — and that God, in His infinite wisdom,
lets them have it.
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