The Hamburg Cell (British Telefilm)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C Telefilm: B-
With the
very basic facts of the events of 9/11 being questioned to the finest detail,
dong any dramatic film about it is a risk and is bound to date quickly, no
matter what we find out. Antonia Bird’s
British TV movie The Hamburg Cell (2004)
was such a hot commodity that HBO actually picked it up, a rare import for the
pay-network. The telefilm deals with the
cell out of Hamburg, Germany that was led by Mohamed Atta that took over the
one of the flights that fateful day.
The first
half of the 101 minutes is interesting, trying to look inside the motivations
and rationale for doing what they are accused of doing. The hate of The West, America, Israel and
anything that smacks of progress for anyone.
There are the near-misses that could have stopped them, the personal
turmoil, the instances that should have been red alters to certain people who
did not suspect and the kind of combination of brainwashing, denial, hate,
self-hate and cult group thinking it takes to be an ultimate player/martyr in
the cult of suicide bombing.
The first
half is well written, directed and acted, with the Ronan Bennett/Alice Perman
teleplay offering an intelligent approach that does not play things in a
heavy-handed way. Unfortunately, the
second half goes into decline as the obvious is on the horizon and the telefilm
lags as a result from predictability and also a sense that maybe all we then see
might not quite be what really happened.
No matter what we discover at a later date, this is ambitious and offers
a history with enough room to question specifics by not being forcefully
propagandic. It will be interesting to
see how this holds up a few years form now.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is obviously shot in digital High
Definition and has some softness and a slightly darkened image for style that
makes no major difference. Detail is
soft and color slightly drained. This is
a bit boring in its pretension to exclaim visually that it is “serious” when
this is so clichéd. The Dolby Digital
2.0 Stereo has no major surrounds and is a recent clean recording. The only extras are two sets of text notes.
- Nicholas Sheffo
