Staring at his allegorical self in the mirror he concludes: "No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan-you had it all and you threw it away."Īs film scholar Guy Westwell has noted, 25th Hour shows how "activities in the past have played a role in shaping the circumstances of the present." In other words, as Monty recognizes his own culpability in his downfall, there is a bold (particularly for 2002) suggestion that America too, can look to its own actions for answers.Ģ5th Hour's allegory is strengthened in its second set piece, a fantasy sequence where Monty imagines going on the run rather than reporting to Otisville Prison. This scene takes on its full significance when Monty finally accepts blame. Monty stares into a bathroom mirror, seeing in the image of himself, New York's diverse multitudes-as well as his friends, father, partner, Osama bin Laden, George Bush and Dick Cheney-and he rants viciously at them all. This depiction of Monty is perhaps most suggestive in one of two stylized set pieces in the film: the "Fuck You" monologue. As they outline his grim destiny, the camera pans menacingly down to the site of destruction, binding Monty's story to the story of 9/11. In one striking scene in 25th Hour, Monty's friends Francis (Barry Pepper) and Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman) discuss his fate while looking down at the floodlit excavation of Ground Zero. They also spoke to a burgeoning nationalism and xenophobia, as I've argued elsewhere. Without wider contexts, their "micro" approaches perpetuated this inward drift and chimed with other trends: A need for masculine heroes, commemoration, memorialization and the need to work through trauma. Both World Trade Center and United 93 focused on the immediate emergencies of 9/11 and opted to ignore the associated geopolitics. The convergence of these issues partially explains the inward approaches of Stone and Greengrass-two of Hollywood's most political directors. Cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek famously wrote that the oft-repeated television images were "reminiscent of spectacular shots in catastrophe movies," or "special effect which outdid all others." So there was a practical problem of filming something already seen as cinematic, but also an unsettling and traumatic intersection between reality and fiction.Ī further challenge for filmmakers has been locating a political position, given the context of the highly divisive War on Terror. That the attacks were seen as profoundly "cinematic," for example. This practice of attaching too much singular importance to the attacks is easy to identify in retrospect, but was harder in the earlier aftermath.Īdditionally, filmmakers faced more immediate challenges in depicting 9/11. The narrative follows his final day of freedom: His world has changed irrevocably and he is suspicious of everyone.Ģ5th Hour is worthy of reappraisal for many reasons, but I'd like to focus on how it handles an increasingly vexing aporia-the problem of meaningfully addressing the impact of 9/11 without reinforcing the notion that the attacks came "out of the blue" or "changed everything." These conceits have proven problematic as they tend to remove the attacks from their contexts, pre-histories and effects and have been used ideologically, to advance unilateral agendas-and a stubborn brand of American exceptionalism.Ĭinema, literature, art, commentary and scholarship-even work that critiques such notions-have often inadvertently perpetuated this idea of exceptionalism simply by placing yet more attention on 9/11. The film's main character, Monty (Edward Norton), is a convicted drug dealer who has just been sentenced to seven years in jail. Unlike some high-profile releases-such as Oliver Stone's World Trade Center or Paul Greengrass's United 93, both released in 2006-Spike Lee's 25th Hour manages to capture the post-9/11 lassitude that was so acutely felt by Americans, while simultaneously delivering a trenchant political critique. In fact, while blockbusters such as Spider-Man (2002) were hastily re-edited to remove images of the World Trade Center, Lee made the attacks fundamental to 25th Hour, building in extended shots of Ground Zero and the Tribute in Light to pivotal moments in the film. Spike Lee's 25th Hour, released in 2002, was mostly shot during the summer of 2001 and was reworked following 9/11. ![]() The most enduring cinematic representation of 9/11 was not originally meant to be about the World Trade Center attacks at all. This article first appeared on The Conversation.
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