A conspiracy nut makes a 9/11 movie

Oliver Stone has announced plans to make a 9/11 film starring Nicholas Cage. Now, ordinarily, I’m a defender of Stone. One of the country’s most potent political filmmakers, he brings a piercing, fiercely independent view to any subject he tackles. Even when his films are bad (U-Turn, Any Given Sunday), they’re almost always interesting. True, I joined the chorus in knocking his overblown epic-wannabe Alexander, and I think Natural Born Killers is one of the basest, most demoralizing films of all time, but as a general rule, you can put me in the Stone-supporter category.

Now, however, he wants to make a movie about 9/11, and I just can’t see what purpose this film will serve. Here are the possibilities, as far as I can tell:

1. A conspiracy film that, in JFK-like fashion, takes on the myriad conspiracy theories that say that the White House is behind the attacks and that what crashed into the Pentagon was actually either a missile or a U.S. military fighter plane. While Stone seems likely to be interested by these ideas, I don’t think any major Hollywood studio is going to bankroll a film that 9/11 was a government-sponsored event – the popular backlash and uproar would be to the controversies surrounding The Passion and Fahrenheit 9/11 as War and Peace is to an classified ad. Even a rogue like Stone couldn't get away with this sort of liberal hubris.
2. A film that explores and elucidates on the run-up to the attack from the perspective of terrorists and U.S. anti-terrorism forces. Here, you’d probably get either some sort of moral balancing act that takes excruciating pains to show plenty of respect to Islam while decrying the bombers as the few bad apples, or a wishy-washy psychological account of how the terrorists were people too, driven to extremism by circumstances. Again, the likelihood that anything other than full-on demonization of the terrorists (as they deserve) would pass muster with the public or the skittish studio suits is low.
3. A jingoistic, pro-America, “remember-the-heroes” film that ignores the terrorists and the conspiracy and focuses on the thing we all agree on: the momentous heroism displayed by the rescue crews that day. This seems to be the direction the Stone is going, with Cage playing a fireman who manages to rescue some of the few survivors of the crash. But do we really need this sort of unconsidered John Wayne WWII flick gung-ho patriotism at the box office - aren't there enough SUVs driving around with These Colors Don't Run bumper stickers to keep us going for a while? Love for country is great, but a weepy ode to American bravery isn't exactly going to make a compelling movie. And don't think for a moment that this is some sort of Hollywood love song to America; this is about profit, pure and simple Hollywood raking in the bucks like this is just a high-gloss version of the guys who made a mint selling flags on September 12 ^th – profiting off of our tears and national devotion.
   

Four years may seem like a long time, but our nation is still very much reeling from the shock of that day. As a result, Stone, limited by his financiers to “good taste,” won’t have much freedom to make a film that says anything other than, “wow, those guys are heroes.” It’s a nice sentiment, sure, but it’s awfully simplistic, and it’s a cynical way to profit off the attacks. Stone’s never been much for subtlety, and this sounds like a recipe for his biggest mistake yet.