WTC View
Reel Affirmations 2005
Review by Will Doig
Rating: 
(2 out of 5)
Tuesday, 10/18/2005, 7:15 PM
Feature presentation, $6 at Landmark’s E Street Cinema
AS THE REEL Affirmations program guide is careful to point out, nothing ”highlights the resiliency of the human spirit” like the New York City real estate market.
Actually, the program guide is talking about WTC View, an erratically acted and, at times, histrionically scripted film about renting a room via a Village Voice classified ad in the days following September 11, 2001. Eric, the renter, hosts a steady stream of apartment hunters who have come to see the room and, with sometimes overcooked acting-school melodrama, display their eccentricities, as if to say, ”What a crazy bunch of characters we are! Only in New York!”
The characters each use their short time on screen to spin a yarn about how the attacks have affected them personally, stories that the filmmaker uses as small parts of a whole to describe a tragedy too large to be explained by any one individual. A few of the descriptions seem genuine, but others seem to be reaching — the gutter-punk, for instance, who talks about his dust-covered Battery Park City apartment clearly lives nowhere near Battery Park City. And the sentimental plot-twist at the end is fairly predictable. An event as big as 9/11 demands sober acting chops and a low-key script. WTC View seems to be heavy on acting technique and unfocused on the event itself. — Will Doig
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