Entertainment

A catastrophe the scale of 9/11 creates room for any number of themes and emotions: sadness and rage, death and survival, triumph and agony.

It's the filmmaker's job to make sense of all this in a package that people will want to open.

As we approach the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, we're seeing just how many different angles we can take in approaching that dark day.

Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, which opens Wednesday, spotlights a tale of survival in telling the story of John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno, Port Authority police officers who were pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center. Their fate is far different from that suffered by passengers of United 93, who sacrificed their lives to prevent yet another fiery collision. They were memorialized in United 93, which arrived in April amid questions of whether it was too soon to relive 9/11. And if you're more interested in the residual effects of grief, there's The Great New Wonderful, a poignant ensemble piece opening later this month about New Yorkers suppressing their feelings one year after the attacks.

One earth-shattering event. And three completely different movies.

One thing is certain: World Trade Center is not the movie anyone expected from the controversial Mr. Stone. Though much of the movie takes place in the darkness of twisted steel and crumbled concrete, it's a story of inspiration and survival.

In a word, it's positive. This is the quality that grabbed Michael Peña, who plays Mr. Jimeno in the movie. He recalls the bleak thoughts he had as he watched footage of the towers collapsing, over and over.

"Then I read this script, and it balanced it out and gave me a different viewpoint," Mr. Peña said in Dallas last month.

"Yes, it was a terrible tragedy, and people died. But you can also shift the focus and see that people survived. Not only that, people came together. Now, when I think of the tsunami, or Katrina, I think of the people who helped."

This isn't to say United 93 was relentlessly negative. It, too, is a story of heroism, and no one who saw the movie kick off the Tribeca Film Festival, with victims' family members sobbing in the balcony, could deny its cathartic powers.

But if that story ended heroically, it also ended tragically. We knew the fate that would meet the passengers in the end. United 93 was cleansing, but it's hard to argue that it was uplifting.

On the other hand, World Trade Center focuses on the positives that came out of that day.

"None of us should ever forget the body blow that we experienced that day," says Stephen J. Dannhauser, president of the New York Police and Fire Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund. "But it was also a day when we saw the best of human beings, with people helping people. That's what you saw depicted in this film."

The Benefit Fund is one of four charitable organizations that will split 10 percent of World Trade Center U.S. ticket sales for the movie's first five days in release.

The release of United 93 was met by widespread wondering of whether it was too soon to relive 9/11.

That line of questioning has quieted for World Trade Center, but it still lingers.

"I don't think it's too soon, but you have to go by your own heart," says Mr. Stone. "If you do a film with some backbone and some heart, with the market being what it is, it might still fail in the immediate. But if it has good intentions, it tends to accrue value over the years."

United 93 director Paul Greengrass faced similar questions when his film opened in April.

"I feel it has to justify itself to its audience," he said. "Everyone will ask some questions: Is it too soon, is it exploitative, was it made with some truthfulness? The bar is high, and it should be."

The film, which was well received by critics, grossed $11 million opening weekend to finish at No. 2, behind the Robin Williams comedy RV. It has made just $31 million to date.

The Great New Wonderful won't get the same size headlines as United 93 or World Trade Center. But it may actually be a better signpost for the fifth anniversary of 9/11.

Most of the film takes place on Sept. 10, 2002, or the eve of the first anniversary. An assortment of New Yorkers, including a WTC survivor in therapy, a high-end cake designer and a pair of Indian secret service agents, go about their daily business. But they're all suppressing something inside — frustration, anger, overwhelming sadness.

They have locked their 9/11 feelings in a deep, dark place, as so many of us do when a tragedy is too massive to process.

"In my mind, it's about this collective grieving that went on in New York after 9/11," says Maggie Gyllenhaal, who plays the cake designer in The Great New Wonderful and Mr. Jimeno's wife in World Trade Center . "People were going to work and making dinner and raising their families, but there was this pain in everyone."

So what is the next frontier of 9/11 movies? Could we stomach a story about the people high up in the towers? How about another survivor story? Or a view from the Oval Office?

Whichever way the movies take us, we can be sure of this: 9/11 isn't just the story of our lifetime.

It's an endless tapestry of tales that encompasses every conceivable feeling and thought.

E-mail cvognar@dallasnews.com