Out of all filmic responses to 9/11 to emerge in the last decade, Rebirth may be the most noble. Centering on the personal experiences of five people directly affected by the World Trade Center terrorist attack and its subsequent collapse (and juxtaposing them with time-lapse footage of the reconstruction effort), Rebirth charts the grieving process in real-time by collecting interviews over the course of the last ten years as its protagonists experience it. In the process, it almost completely sacrifices an authorial voice, ceding nearly all of its ground to those speaking, and allowing them to determine the direction and the terms of recovery. While it's hard to think of a more respectful approach to the material (which alone justifies the film's existence), one can't help but feel that Rebirth represents a grand approach that perhaps didn't find the appropriate medium. It seems petty to criticize a good film for not being great, but in the case of something as personal as the response to the attacks, it's hard to never feel compromised.
All five speakers (presented, for the most part, in talking head style interview format) lost a great deal in the attack; four of them lost someone close to them, while another, Ling, suffered tremendous burns on much of her body, leading to many years of delicate and invasive surgery in order to correct it. Three of them lost family members; Nick his mother, Brian his brother, Tanya her fiancée. Tim, a fireman, lost a brother-in-arms, and is almost unable to cope with the guilt he feels at having survived the day when so many others did not. Bit by bit, each struggles to take the full measure of what exactly was taken from them that day, but eventually come to find some sort of solace in the hope that what was removed can ultimately be rebuilt, even if the final product doesn't resemble what it was meant to take the place of. Tanya's story is perhaps the best indicator of this, as she manages to unite her new love and family with that of her old fiancee's into one. Each is remarkably honest (there is a generous amount of open space in which they merely think of what to say next), neither withholding vital or painful details or straining to convey their obvious emotion.
Punctuating their otherwise largely uncut interviews (save for the occasional clip of home video footage or b-roll) are extended compositions of Ground Zero, detailing over time the transition from disassembled wreckage to slight but clear form. As a piece of technical craftsmanship, it's impressive, but as a visual metaphor, it comes dangerously close to imposing a fiction on the experiences of its survivors (though not emphasized, the parallel between the site reconstruction and Ling's physical transformation is obvious). If anything is made clear by their story points, it's that grieving is an ongoing process that can't be easily contained by an arbitrary timeline, and to try to define it as such is to misunderstand it. At the conclusion of the film (shooting stopped in 2009), all of the subjects have reached a different level of peace with what has happened to them, and a different degree of control over their own future; there is more than a suggestion that there is more to come. In its greatest moments, Rebirth evokes both a hope and a terror that is ongoing, perhaps infinitely so, which can't help but make it feel as if a feature-length film is too meager a gesture for the story it has to tell.
Fortunately, Project: Rebirth is ongoing, and there are prospects for future work from it. The result here suggests a great deal of potential from it (the cumulative effect here is much stronger than anything you could usually hope for from a not-for-profit production), and the promise of ongoing work is encouraging. If the worst thing that can be said about Rebirth is that it doesn’t encapsulate the 9/11 experience for all who didn’t experience it personally, then there’s considerable reason to think that future output from Rebirth could, particularly if allowed to play out on a canvas of necessary size. Even if this doesn’t satisfy all of the void that seems waiting to be filled, it rises to meet it with a candor and acquittal that have been largely absent from the discussion.
DVD Bonus Features
There is a short video about the time-lapse footage featuring director of photography Tom Lappin, and an extended, hour and a half cut of major events that took place in the interim years the film was shooting.
"Rebirth" is on sale September 6, 2011 and is not rated. Documentary. Directed by James Whitaker. Starring Tim Brown, Nicholas Chirls, Brian Lyons, Tanya Villanueva Tepper, Ling Young.
