TV REVIEW: This week's reviews include 9/11, The Story of Flight 93, the Nine O'Clock News on RTÉ1 and The Late Late Show
In Wednesday night's centrepiece documentary, 9/11, there were moments of poignancy, horror and hope which even the ineptitude of the film-makers could not diminish. The crash of a body hitting the ground from 10 seconds up; the day turning black as the towers fell; urgent calls for quiet rippling from one end of the site to the other as rescue workers halted to listen for survivors who were not there.
There was plenty else, though, which Jules and Gèdèon Naudet managed to get very wrong. These were the two who shot that ground-level footage of the first plane hitting Tower One of the WTC. It was the opening negative of a remarkable reel; they shot film which was in parts astonishing and important.
To mess this up would take talent. They could have made the documentary that defined the day. Instead, they perpetrated a sort of reverse alchemy.
From the beginning, there was a relentless self-promotion. The day itself was a remarkable one, "but almost as remarkable, it was caught on videotape. From beginning to end. And tonight, you'll see it all". This came through a little presentation by Robert De Niro ("Hi, I'm Robert De Niro . . .") that was an unnecessary embellishment. "Soon they would face the unthinkable, but would they be ready?" he asked, his monologue filched from the dust-jacket of a cheap thriller. "Nothing could have prepared the firefighters for what was about to happen."
There was also a constant need to over-explain. Commentary was provided where words were pointless. Conversations were recited even as you could hear and see the people having them. The documentary was narrated in a highly artificial style, with the two film-makers and a firefighter, James Hanlon, speaking either to an unseen interviewer or direct to camera. They used highly rehearsed lines, with pinpoint delivery.
Hanlon's script in particular was made of eager slang and patter: "We stayed up late that night, just telling jokes and bustin' chops." The key words were "The Guys". They have become shorthand for the nobility, bravery and masculinity of the firefighters, and they made almost as many appearances as the Naudet brothers themselves. Too often, both appeared at the same time.
With 9/11, the Naudets attempted to weave themselves into the history of that day. Worse, they aimed to secrete themselves into the mythology built around the firefighters. From the beginning, they were openly courting their subjects, beta males ingratiating themselves with the silverbacks ("We were becoming accepted . . ."). Gradually, it became their day.
Jules was caught inside Tower One as Tower Two dropped, and the footage of the firefighters scrambling for an exit as the world collapsed around them should have been allowed to run its course. Instead, all went dark, until Jules appeared, from a tall stool in a studio, to describe the indescribable. Everything else could wait.
By the end, the Naudets were even casting judgment on the firefighters, as if their own lives had been spent among the heat and falling rubble of burning buildings, as opposed to the centrally-heated comforts of an editing suite. It began as a straightforward film following rookie firefighter Tony Benetatos awaiting his first fire. Benetatos was the last to leave the station after the attack, but the last to return. "He proved himself that day . . ." said Gèdèon Naudet, weedy French film-maker, not grizzly captain, ". . . as one of The Guys."
Jules Naudet, talking about the moment of the first collapse, of how he continued filming amidst the catastrophe, said: "The cameraman took over." But when the ego replaced the cameraman, things began to get out of control.
Both RTÉ and BBC showed this film as the prime offering on the night of the anniversary. It is a little more understandable that RTÉ would rely on an import, but the fact that the BBC couldn't produce a major documentary of its own said much about how the whole anniversary has been dealt with. There have been piecemeal offerings of value, but no single, all-encompassing ambitious film emerged from two weeks of retrospection. It is as if the apocalyptic drama of the day itself set a challenge to film-makers that has yet to be accepted.
TV3's sole contribution - apart from its news coverage - was The Story of Flight 93. Even in these contemplative hours, TV3 reached for the safety blanket of a dramatised version of actual events. The drama schedule seeped into the current affairs schedule.
The Story of Flight 93 avoided the elements that did not suit the narrative so neatly. What we do know of their actions proves the passengers to have been genuinely heroic, but the editor's knife cast a shadow over them.
In this dramatisation, phone calls were deliberately omitted. There was a dramatic reconstruction of the 911 phone call made by Todd Beamer, and an interview with Lisa D. Jefferson, the dispatcher who spoke to him. But it did not include the 911 call made from a toilet on the plane, nor did it interview dispatcher Glenn Cramer, who took that one. He listened to a panicked voice describing a small explosion and white smoke seeping through the cabin.
The film ended with the passengers storming the cockpit. The ending remains unknown, chiefly because the cockpit voice-recorder has never been released to the public.
The story was used as medicine for the US psyche, a sort of victory on a day of horrible loss. It is not, though, one we need to ingest without question on this side of the world. There is nothing to be gained in seeing conspiracy where none exists, but there is no merit either in tailoring the narrative to suit the mythology, which could ultimately reveal itself to have been nothing more than a placebo.
If you needed to know how to feel about the occasion, Tuesday's Nine O'Clock News was there to help. During its report on the This Is New York exhibition of photographs currently on display in Dublin, it ran an Arvo Pärt composition underneath the reporter's voice by way of a soundtrack. And when the reporter had said her piece, it turned up the volume a little and led us, hand on shoulder, to the end of the report.
They've done this with increasing regularity on the RTÉ news, editorialising through music. The This Is New York report was the "And finally" of that evening, but there were plenty of other stories: the Government's withdrawal from Stadium Ireland; the Nice referendum debate; the first court appearance of Ian Huntley. Logically, if one report is worth a soundtrack, then all are.
With The Late Late Show returning, Eamon Dunphy's appearance will have cast a long shadow not just over the week, but over the series. As we came to him, Dunphy looked like a man expecting an ambush. Shrunk in the seat. Gripping the edges of the chair. It would have been visible in his eyes, if they weren't buried so deep in his sockets.
It has happened to guests before, that they have found themselves ranged against strategically placed audience members and hostile panellists. But Dunphy needn't have worried. It should have been a bruising encounter with a heavyweight; instead, it became an exercise in swatting flies.
By the close, Dunphy looked merely bored. There was sniping from the stands, but it seemed all he could do to summon the energy to reply.
Why did the show feel the need for a guest alongside Dunphy? Why Jimmy Magee was the other man adds only a layer of mystery. Here was an opportunity for a head-to-head between the two most heavyweight broadcasters of the day, ruined by the show's pathological need for as many voices as possible, followed by questions from the audience.
Kenny himself seemed unable to rise above the constraints. He questioned Roy Keane's use of the word "nous" in his book, suggesting that it wouldn't be in his lexicon. Dunphy's riposte made Kenny look snobbish and ridiculous, while giving Dunphy an upper hand he never relinquished. Kenny found sanctuary in the raised hands of the audience, a device that only erodes faith in the host to ask the right questions in the first place.
There was one moment when Kenny seemed to have stumbled on a question that promised potential revelation.
"If you could turn back the clock, would you say: 'Roy, don't write the book'?" Everything stopped. Dunphy thought about it. Shrunk a little into his shoulders. Drew a breath . . .
But it was Jimmy Magee who spoke. "If I could just interrupt there . . ." And he did.
The Late Late is flatlining, its cardiogram punctuated only by weak, fading flutters of a heartbeat. After several years on television, Kenny still looks like a host who would be more comfortable if nobody was watching him.