Customer Reviews

102 Minutes That Changed America

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The History Channel aired this program several times in the wake of the anniversary of 9-11. I was able to catch two viewings of this show.

I live in San Diego, Ca. and like most people, I witnessed 9-11 through the lens of the collective (and individual) camera eyes. To say this is the "best" 9-11 documentary is, perhaps, inappropriate to say, but this particular program stands high above any of previous 9-11 shows I have seen as far as capturing what must have been a horrific event to witness first hand.
What makes this program stand out is it's lack of a produced narrative. No Dan Rather telling me what I already know. No trite musings that have littered most of these types of programs. Instead the producers have allowed the viewer to see and hear the events as they happened. It is, for the most part, straight footage with no production elements added.If any narration IS heard it is from any given individual who happenes to be speaking within the video footage itself. As a viewer we are drawn into this presentation as we watch others watching the horror, and then watch it ourselves. There is a minimal amount of ambient soundtrack included but it is highly underscored and very consistant with much of the raw footage that fills this doucumentary.
As for the footage included, it is safe to say it has to be some of the most compelling news-type footage I have ever seen, in regards to anything. Much of this footage was done by amateurs but it does not detract form the experience one bit.
One particularly haunting shot that sticks out to me is a shot taken by an individual somewhere near the base of the WTC towers after both have been hit. THe camera is busy collecting visuals of a courtyard barren of any people...just papers and ashes drifting lazely with ominous whimzey. The sounds of distant panic accompanied by an outdoor speaker system playing a muzak version of Billy Joel's "she's always a woman to me". Truely erie.
I could not recommend this program enough. I would say order it direct from the History Channel, but Amazon has it for less, but no matter where or how you get, do get it. It's not easy to watch, but it's very difficult not to as well.

The aftermath of the attacks on the Twin Towers was likely the most videotaped event in human history. New Yorkers, New Jerseyites, other locals, and tourists started filming shortly after the first tower was hit and continued throughout the day, sometimes at their own peril. "102 Minutes That Changed America" documents what they saw and what they filmed. The film relies very little on video from reporters or the major networks, although at times you can hear the television or radio playing in the background as people film. Instead, the filmmakers of this documentary from the History Channel have woven together skillfully dozens of amateur videos that more accurately capture how people reacted on this historic day. The average person videotaping from her living room in a high rise apartment just blocks away the Twin Towers, and the average tourist recording reactions of people in Time Square. In addition, the filmmakers wisely opted to forgo including narration, and rely on only minimal title cards to inform the audience where the video was being filmed, the time, and so forth.

Some of these amateur videographers provide running commentary for us, expressing their disbelief at what is unfolding. Some of them talk to loved ones who are nearby or record people around them, including strangers. Still others record in abject silence. The videos at the beginning of the documentary reflect the initial confusion as people saw the first tower ablaze. People speculate that it was just a small plane that got lost. Eventually, the videographers and people in the streets realize that it was a terrorist act. We hear the screams and panic as the second plane hits - these moments are among the most gut-wrenching and dramatic. One group of people near the Twin Towers decide hastily to evacuate their apartment, and we witness as they frantically put on their shoes and pile into an elevator.

There is no filter here. No Katie Couric to reassuringly tell us that the President is acting to neutralize the threat. No CNN to analyze who may be responsible. No buffer from the anguish and pain, including the horrifying realization people have when they finally understand that what they thought was debris falling from the towers is actually people jumping from the buildings. The footage is raw and most people will find watching "102 Minutes" to be a draining experience. However, it is important to recall what we all experienced that day. This documentary from the History Chanel is a first-rate effort to preserve these events forever.

This is by far the best documentary of September 11th that I have ever seen. It does not use news footage, which really doesn't show how the event affected New York City. It shows the footage of the people who were there and in real time. It shows the mood of the city at the time, and how confusion was widespread among people who had no clue as to what was happening.
This documentary also shows how rumors were rampant in the city at the time and the disinformation spread from person to person (such as the two women who said that someone else told them that the second plane was a British Airways). This account of 911 is shocking, horrifying, disturbing, and heart wrenching. It overall gives you more information about 911 than you get from the news, and it shows you only footage and sound from the people in New York City on the streets who just happened to have their cameras at the time. This is a very compelling and dark account of one of the worst days in American History. I would fully 100% recommend this to anyone interested in 911. It is great, informative, and will keep you glued to your t.v. screen.

I've seen quite a few different 9/11 videos and this disc had a lot of content that I had never seen before. It is presented as constant stream of video from different sources in chronological order, interrupted only by a black screen with white text that shows the time the segment was filmed.

Also included in a 15-minute documentary with interviews from some of the people who filmed the video in the main piece. It helps provide some context and understand how terrible event impacted so many ordinary people.

The most awe-inspiring moment is the video filmed by a female college student with her roommate. They are watching people leap to their death from the first tower, and then the second plane hits. The sound of their screaming when the building explodes is something that will be with me for a long time.

All day today I have been watching documentaries on 9/11. This is one of the better ones, in that it gathers footage from all different sources and perspectives,

To me, the question is not are these films any good. Anyone with a little skill and an editing machine can put the abundance of footage of 9/11 together and tell the story.

More interesting is WHY watch this. We all know what happened on that day, yet each year we see these films. Obviously people watch, or they would not air,

Does it help to remember that day? Do we heal from seeing it, regaining a visceral sense of 9/11? We have since become more polarized than we were before that day--right after which we all seemed united. Does watching this film remind us of some of what we are arguing about?

I still can't decide the exact function of a film like this, but as I watch this film, as I think of Afganestan and Iraq, Bush and Obama, I realize that this is very quickly becoming a long time ago.

But there are a whole bunch of fourth and fifth and sixth graders who were just babies on 9/11. They won't remember that soon before this, we were worried why our tech stocks were swooning, if Bush or Gore got a dimpled chad or a hanging chad. If Gary Condit slept with Sandra Levy.


But this is the world 9/11 robbed us of, and this is still impacting our culture, our laws, our politics, and our daily lives in a million subtle ways.

Pretty soon most young adults will not know a world before that day. They will experience the what--having to have five documents to get a driving license, a long wait at an airport. But they will need to see the why--how one day made the world they know.

Maybe these films are for them

This is really a great documentary. Very powerful original footage. The History Channel went with real primary source history on this one: eye-witness camcorder and cell phone video of the events unfolding and peoples' reactions to them in New York City. There is not so much as a frame of televised (e.g., cable news) footage: this is 9-11 through the eyes of citizens who were there. No narration, no interpretation. Just raw footage through the many different camcorders of people there, arranged into a chronological order. No interviews of survivors or witnesses, no factoids-you-didn't-know, in many cases not particularly good shots of important events, just the raw 102 minutes as they unfold through camcorders and phones.

An important caveat about a documentary containing almost 100% amateur video is that the video is very, very shaky. So much that my wife and I (she gets motion sick, but I practically never do) both got so motion sick that we had to stop part way through. I wish we had had some mints in the house. Motion sick people be advised: take some over-the-counter dramamine before watching this important documentary.

Nevertheless, this is a very moving documentary. For example, in some places it captures actual terror in peoples' eyes and voices during the events in New York in a way that now other documentary has or really could. Although, as 100% raw footage, it is very different from other 9-11 documentaries, and I would recommend it mostly as a wonderful complement to one or two more of the excellent 9-11 documentaries out there, rather than the sole 9-11 main-stay in your DVD library. The four-star (rather than five-star) rating reflects two aspects of this video. While it is very good, and certainly worth having in a collection of 9-11 documentaries, it is just plain not quite as good as some of the other profoundly moving documentaries on 9-11. Second, in some places the editing was not what it perhaps could have been. Imagine several consecutive seconds of a camcorder bouncing around wildly with audio that is also unintelligible because the camera shooter starts looking somewhere else while filming. My sensitivity to this might have been accentuated by the fact that almost the entire documentary is shaky, but there seemed to be many moments of this that could have been truncated and replaced with better footage.

Be advised also that this documentary is completely within New York, and does not really include the attack on the Pentagon or United Flight 32 in Pennsylvania (even though they overlapped with the 102 minutes in New York).

My husband and I watched this over the 9/11 weekend on the History Channel. It just brought back all those memories of all the initial thoughts and emotions we had, while at the same time we knew what was still coming. One plane hits and everyone is in shock and wonders what is going on. When the second plane hits the panic level suddenly skyrockets. The pure horror of people jumping from the buildings. There is a conversation heard between a man and woman after the first tower collapse about whether or not it is gone or if there is just too much smoke to see it. My husband and I had almost the same conversation at that time. I really appreciated the lack of "official" narrative - just real time conversations and commentary.

I watched this documentary for the first time on the History Channel this past September. It is still on my DVR for anyone to watch who cares to. I will order the DVD very soon. This is simply the best. I "forced" 2 of my sons and my wife to watch it. They didn't want to at first, but none of them left and you could have heard a pin drop while we were watching. Well deserving of any of the awards that have, or will, come its way.

I also highly recommend, as a companion book, "Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11", by David Friend.

I agree with my fellow reviewers abot what a great collection this is and offer kudos those responsible for not only putting it together but also for leaving out the narative commentaries ussually accompanied in documentaries, and allowing the footage to speak for itself. I have one minor complaint about the DVD format: I just watched this program minutes ago on History Channel in widescreen, a format that lends itself to the full scale tradgedy depicted here. Why is that format not available on the DVD?
Other than that, I think this film aught to be replayed every 9/11, to help us never forget the emotion which accompanied that horrible day.

I'm from New York. Even seven years later this is still very hard to watch from an emotional point of view. What is unique about this video is that it is shot from street level by people experiencing the disaster as it happens. As such it has a truly terrifying level of reality. It really makes you feel that you are there. I've seen a lot of videos and news specials on this. Nothing compares with this video for realism.

(How can people review a video that has not been released? It has already been shown on cable TV.)