A Return to the Edge of Horror

NEW YORK--On the afternoon of Sept. 11, the managing partner of a law firm was recalling how he quickly rounded up everyone in the office after the “big bang” shook the World Trade Center’s north tower, where they were perched on the 85th floor. They made it first to the “sky lobby” on the 78th, then through smoke to another stairwell and then down.

They stalled several times but made it to the main lobby, then the street and, as the tower collapsed behind them, he was part of the ash-covered foot parade uptown. He made it to Long Island in time for his son’s 11th birthday party, complete with ice cream cake. “It’s a good day for a celebration,” he said then.

Then he paused, having heard his own words. There was cause for celebration, of course. But three employees of his firm were unaccounted for. Later, one would be found, but two never were, apparently caught in the elevators on their way up to work. And there was something else: His memory of how, when his fleeing group got down to floors in “the 50s,” they passed another group, “firemen walking up, carrying hoses, pushing past us.” The firemen had even left them gifts of sorts, breaking open soda machines on the landings so the evacuees had something to soothe their burning throats.

What could he say? Was he not supposed to celebrate? But how could he also not feel an odd guilt at being alive? How could he not feel a sense of unease he would never fully understand?

The CBS documentary “9/11” brings us back to the overwhelming intensity of that day, and all those confusing emotions. But it also takes us places we haven’t been before--for its camera follows the firefighters who were headed up while the lawyer, his workmates and thousands of others headed down. At least, the camera follows them to a point, to the lobby of that north tower. Then off they go, heading up, 60 pounds of gear on their backs, many never to return.

A friend of mine who wrote a book about those who came of age during the Vietnam War concluded that there was a huge wall dividing that generation, between those who went and those who didn’t.

It’s much the same with Sept. 11, except that the wall is between those who perished and the survivors--even if it was pure chance that often separated one group from the other.

If you worked above a certain floor, where the planes struck, you were doomed. If you were a uniformed rescuer who rushed to the scene and tried to save people in the south tower--the first to crumble--you were doomed.

From the first moment, we thirsted for any last words of those who perished, for any hints of their experience, whether in “I love you” messages left on answering machines or the terse battle cry uttered on a hijacked plane, “Let’s roll.”

But most of the testimony in the aftermath had to be from the survivors. And it’s the same with the ongoing debate over what it means--that too is left to the survivors.

So it is with the much-awaited “9/11,” which airs Sunday night, on the eve of the six-month anniversary. It’s also about survivors.

Few had seen the videotape, but that didn’t stop speculation over what graphic images the two young French filmmakers who shot it might have captured--and which ones the producers would dare show. Some suggested it would be hurtful to victims’ families, or sacrilegious, to show even the faces of men about to go to their deaths, much less their bodies.

In reality, the ashes land on us softly in this compelling two hours, as they did on the man clutching the camera as he ran from the disintegrating tower, 28-year-old Jules Naudet.

“No one should see this,” Naudet says earlier, just as he enters the lobby, explaining into his microphone why he will not turn his camera toward two burning bodies to his right. As close as we come to the abyss, we don’t fall in. He makes the decision for us--we won’t even peer directly at it. In the manner of survivors, watching out for ourselves, we divert our eyes.

Naudet also makes the decision that it’s wrenching enough to hear the crashing sounds outside, suspecting they are the bodies of people jumping from floors that are burning far above. He allows us to wonder, with the firefighters, what the jumpers must be going through up there, but we won’t go outside to see what’s left of them. The thuds are more than enough.

That this is a tale of survivors is not merely by choice. Chance played a part too. Jules Naudet and his brother Gedeon, 32, were spending the summer following a probationary fireman, intending to produce a boy-becomes-a-man documentary as the young “probie” is challenged both by fires and the bust-your-chops veterans inside the century-old Lower Manhattan firehouse of Engine 7, Ladder 1. Instead, both the rookie and the brothers spent the summer learning more about cooking for the boys than fires--there was not a single one until Sept. 11, when they happened to be in the crew closest to the World Trade Center, checking out a harmless gas leak blocks away.

That’s when we hear a loud sound, faces look up and Jules has the instinct to turn his camera up too, in time to catch the first hijacked jetliner strike the north tower. Many cameras were poised by the time the second jet hit the south tower, but he was the only one to capture the first--or to be in either tower with the firefighters.

Yet despite being first at the scene, every member of the firehouse made it back to the Duane Street station. That’s how Engine 7 came to be known as “Lucky 7.”

To that extent, the documentary is a little like one of those war movies in which a select few combatants become “our characters.” Whatever devastation is around them, and whichever secondary characters must fall, we keep our eye on ours guys and exult when they pull through.

They do in part because of the quick action of their commander, Chief Joseph Pfeifer, whom the camera is sticking by in the lobby as he confers with other chiefs. Barely a minute after the tower to the south falls, he gives the order, “All units. Evacuate the building.”

One who doesn’t make it out is Pfeifer’s own brother, from another firehouse. The only glimpse of a dead body is the boot of the revered Fire Department chaplain, Father Mychal Judge, being carried out minutes after he was praying for the safety of others.

To a degree remarkable in a day when most storytelling resists no opportunity to overstate the obvious, the filmmakers recognize the power of understatement. The tension is there naturally, in the manner--not to trivialize it--of a horror film. We in the audience know what’s happening--the people living the moment do not. We want to stop the firefighters heading up the stairs. And when we watch a World Trade Center official use an intercom to try speaking to whoeever may be trapped inside dozens of elevators, we understand why he’s getting only silence. We know how burning jet fuel poured down the shafts.

There were several reasons we felt better about ourselves in the weeks after Sept. 11. On the simplest level, we had an enemy to unite us. But it also was that our culture of rampant egos was humbled. Who dared exploit the moment, or those victims?

So you saw Paul McCartney and other stars playing not to the luminaries who paid $10,000 a ticket but “the real heroes” given the prime seats on the floor of Madison Square Garden, the uniformed rescue workers. And you saw them, in turn, saying, “It’s not about us,” instead waving photos of dead colleagues whose names they insisted be read from the stage.

Before long, of course, we had squabbling over what sort of faces should be portrayed on a memorial statue of firefighters, and over how charity donations would be doled out. We got around to being ourselves.

But by taking us back to the earlier moment, the makers of “9/11” have recognized that they will be scrutinized by the earlier standard, when phoniness and exploitation wouldn’t cut it.

The film does raise some questions. I was not the only one to wonder at a screening Monday, for example, about a scene showing the filmmaking brothers embracing back at the firehouse after a day of not knowing if the other had survived. Someone else at the screening asked who had taken that shot? Was it, in other words, self-conscious heart-tugging manipulation? The Naudets said “an old friend” was with them and picked up one of their cameras.

Others may wonder whether it was appropriate to add wistful background music, which the producers said was “needed as mile markers.” But such moments of skepticism are rare. The filmmakers don’t provide us with many such “outs,” with easy escapes from tensions that need no enhancement.

When a retired fire chief rushes in because he wants to help out, and heads to what became known as ground zero, they don’t try to manufacture suspense over whether he makes it out. We get an after-the-fact talking-head shot of him right away, signaling to us that he is among the living.

The producers said they did tweak reality a bit, mostly to tone down its harrowing nature, not enhance it. Viewers will hear fewer thuds of falling bodies than the microphone picked up. They also will hear fewer curse words from the firemen, though dozens remain--as viewers are warned at the start, the documentary sets a new standard for network television in echoing that reality.

The debate over how much raw “9/11” reality we can take will hardly end with this show. As is well known, HBO is preparing its own documentary on that day, one that apparently won’t divert its eyes, or camera, from the falling bodies.

Europeans have already seen those images. Americans tend to look away, wary of crossing the line beyond which undeniable fascination becomes prurient interest.

As with the Naudets’ documentary for CBS, however, it’s unfair to begin the debate before seeing the work. There are times when the most horrifying pictures--like the mass graves of the Nazi Holocaust--must be seen. In that case, they should have been seen sooner rather than later.

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“9/11” will be shown Sunday night at 9 on CBS. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children). The broadcast also carries warnings of coarse language.