In Sean Penn’s ‘11’ 09’ 11’’ short film, he says that after 9/11, America was finally able to see reality. That perhaps it wasn’t so great and unbeatable and that it wasn’t able to fool itself under a shroud of ‘memories’ of it’s past.
We are told the story of an old widower played by Ernest Borgnine. As he gets up one morning he complains about the lack of light in his flat. Penn is playing no games with us here; he is talking light and dark, vision and blindness, knowledge and ignorance. During his day he looks back over old photos, notably his wife and also a military picture of, presumably, a family member, presumably his son. The man, like America, says Penn, has an affection for the past and perhaps even ‘lives’ off the past, the man doesn’t seem to do much else but look over his photos and, perhaps more importantly, and obviously, talk to his deceased wife. He lays her dresses out on the bed, dances with them and wishes them goodnight on an evening as if his wife was in the dress. I think what Penn is driving at here is that America is still living off it’s (so called) ‘glory’ days and not living in the present, addressing the real issues affecting itself currently. Imagining the man as America isn’t hard when he’s being played by American heavyweight Borgnine. Dead, or wilted, flowers on the man’s window sill, a once beauty, now decayed, perhaps show that Penn at least doesn’t think that the memories America is living on are just myths. This metaphor becomes painfully obvious when it is revealed that one of the Twin Towers was the reason for the lack of light in the man’s flat. When it falls down, light enters the flat and the man, at first jubilant over the fact his flowers can now grow, sees, really sees, that his wife is not here to enjoy this with him, just as America realizes that it’s ‘glory’ times have gone and are not here to help it now. Personally I find it, or think it could be, confusing that Penn has the man become jubilant after the event but before the realization, however, I think that this may just be the circumstance through which Penn has chosen to relay his message.
