Reviews

What a flick! This movie deserves a much wider audience. And if you're an American who's "allergic" to reading sub-titles, get over it. You owe it to yourself to watch this movie. The story sweeps you along and features an engaging cast, unbelievably fine production values, and cinematography that's like fine French paintings come to life.

"A Long Engagement" is by the same director as "Amelie," Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It also features the same Audrey Tautou in the lead role. But whereas "Amelie" played like an amusing soufflé, "A Long Engagement" is darker and earthier, like truffles dug out of French soil.

Tautou plays a crippled girl who won't give up searching for her fiancée, reportedly killed by his own troops for self-mutilation during World War I. The scenes in the trenches of the Somme are some of the most horrific war scenes ever. The setting of the First World War was what drew me to the movie. The "Great War" has been overshadowed, in history and certainly in cinema, by the Second World War. But as director Jeunet shows so powerfully in "A Long Engagement," it was a war with unique terrors and a story we have yet to understand.

So watch the movie. Then take the time to also watch the "making of" extras on the DVD. It shows the love French people have for the art of movie making--a love which shows on every frame of "A Long Engagement."

What a masterful job Nowrasteh and Cunningham did on this mini-series. I watched the first night in awe, propelled from one moment to the next. My heart ached at the scenes of the Twin Towers standing there shiny and untouched, since we all know what is coming. The throb of New York, going about its business, shrugging off the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 was matched in dramatic counterpoint by the intensity and grit of the streets of Islamabad and slums of Nairobi. We saw some honest-to-goodness heroes–both in the west and the east. Harvey Keitel does a masterful job portraying the intelligence agent O'Neill--the prophet crying in the wilderness whom no one would listen to. And how heartening to see good, brave Muslim characters, like Massoud, the warrior of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan who wonders, "Aren't there any brave men left in America?" I noticed how well the writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh took a complicated story with many foreign places and foreign names and the push-pull of intelligence gathering bumping up against bureaucratic and political obtrusiveness, and wove the whole into a smooth flowing, compelling narrative. Amid all the controversy that preceded this docudrama it was easy to forget that this is a story–a story we all need to hear and understand. But the movie makers made it powerful and gripping.

The sound track complemented the narrative–I just loved that haunting African song after the bombing of the Nairobi Embassy. It reminded me of the pain of the citizens of so many countries in this war.

Whatever your political viewpoint, do yourself a favor and watch the second night of "The Path to 9/11." Don't let those with political agendas rob you of watching a powerful story. It will help you honor the fallen and understand the enemy who has sworn to destroy us.