What were they doing on 10 September? I've often wondered. I know exactly what I was doing, because 10 September is our wedding anniversary and that year, 2001, it was our seventh. We went out for supper in the middle of the City of London. We chose a posh Conran number high above the Bank of England. It was one of those exquisitely balmy early-autumn evenings, with a flawless sky and a golden sunset. Red buses trundled around far beneath us as we ate oysters. Meanwhile, on the east coast of America, several hundred people were getting ready to make four separate, unassuming plane trips early the next morning, and 19 Muslim radicals were getting ready to go to paradise.
The queasy moments when travel documents were checked and knives pocketed are carefully envisioned in The Hamburg Cell, a glossy drama-documentary for Channel 4 which has been selected for this year's Venice Film Festival: unusually, this classy calling card will be preceded by a peak-time television broadcast.
At the preview, Peter Dale, head of documentaries at Channel 4, said he received his first pitch for a piece on the 9/11 atrocities some moments before the first tower actually fell. "The film-maker, who shall remain nameless, assured me that this event was going to be important," Dale said, "and that it was the sort of thing about which a documentary must be made." Well, at least the caller didn't label it "a good day to bury bad news", but his advantageous style sort of smells the same. It leaves one musing whether media and Labour Party spin are indeed closely related.
What Dale did eventually commission was this film, directed by Antonia Bird and written by Ronan Bennett, who worked with Alice Perman of Mentorn Films. Perman was responsible for the ""exhaustive" factual research on the lives of the terrorists who flew the planes. The findings were written into a script that attempts to humanise the men; while not overtly sympathising with them, it ventures into some depiction of their
growing paranoia and warped reasoning
that, as responsible Muslims, they must fight a jihad against the United States.
The trouble with such an approach is that it is unsustainable. We see the terrorists undergoing brainwashing in Germany (hence the title), then moving to Florida to learn how to fly planes (in a blackly comic moment, one man screams at his instructor: "I don't want to learn how to land! Or take off! Just show me London-New York!"). Yet although the film-makers are keen to highlight the men's "flesh-and-blood" vulnerability, the warriors' crazed dogma is contrasted with the enemy's gentility. Americans are shown, overall, as a civil and courteous bunch, happy to share their food and beer with strangers, helpful in procuring visas - people who like rollerblading and are always ready with a "Have a nice day". Even dim US airport officials are concerned to play the game correctly.
The film-makers have tried to get us to understand the motivation of one man who might try to fly a jet into the White House; but the deeds, underscored by shockingly direct newsreel, are so abhorrent that even careful scripting can't get around our revulsion. The actor playing that terrorist has chosen to leave his surname out of the credits.
The Hamburg Cell will be shown on Channel 4 on 2 September (9pm)
