j. rottenberg

“It felt like a movie” — that’s what we all said in the days and weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, when a Michael Bay action film slammed uncomfortably into real life. But with the perspective of 25 years, what’s lingered for the most part aren’t the most literal depictions of the day, but oblique dramas that capture something more subtle: the free-floating anxiety of a nightmare. In our list, you’ll find titles that confront Sept. 11 directly, but others that bring to mind a deeper, broader canon of trauma.

‘Donnie Darko’ (2001)

Jake Gyllenhaal in the 2001 movie “Donnie Darko.”

(NewMarket Films)

Going to the movies in the fall of 2001 was a solace and escape for many New Yorkers, though the films themselves often had an eerie, unplanned timeliness that made them resonate in an unshakable way. You could ache for the cozy city of the past in “The Royal Tenenbaums” or grapple with the schism of everything suddenly feeling different in “Mulholland Drive.” Or you could envelop yourself in Richard Kelly’s moody “Donnie Darko,” a teen drama touched by metaphysical doominess in which plane engines fall from the sky and death wears a rabbit costume. The movie has since become an unexplainable piece of comfort for a spooked generation. In its weather, its soundtrack and the haunted stare of Jake Gyllenhaal, it evokes the weeks after 9/11, even if it anticipated them. — Joshua Rothkopf

‘25th Hour’ (2002)

Edward Norton in the movie “25th Hour.”

(David Lee / Touchstone Pictures)

Only months after the attacks, Spike Lee took on 9/11 with a boldness that only 15 years of provocative filmmaking — and a lifetime of loving New York — could sharpen into an artist. This interpersonal drama, about the fallout of a drug dealer (Edward Norton) going to prison, was deep in development when real-life events altered its trajectory. Lee insisted on including the American flags dotting lawns, the general sense of unease and, in a somber touch, a credits sequence featuring the Tribute in Light. Overwhelmingly, one scene takes place in a Tribeca hi-rise with a view of ground zero, and even though the conversation itself concerns a friend in trouble, it quickly shifts onto metaphorical grounds of guilt, responsibility and rage. There still may not be a better 9/11 film than this one. — J. Rothkopf

‘Munich’ (2005)

A scene from the movie “Munich.”

(Karen Ballard / Universal Pictures)

On the surface, Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” released earlier in 2005, may seem like his more obviously 9/11-coded film (“Is it the terrorists?” Dakota Fanning’s character asks). But “Munich,” which followed six months later, goes straight to the questions of terrorism and endless cycles of retaliation that hung over the period. Eric Bana plays Avner, a Mossad operative sent to hunt down the Palestinians whom Israel holds responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. As the revenge killings mount, the mission begins to eat away at him — and Avner’s belief in closure is shaken. Spielberg makes the contemporary connections hard to ignore. In a final scene, set in mid-’70s New York, after Avner and his handler Ephraim, played by Geoffrey Rush, argue over what they have done, the camera pans across the Manhattan skyline southward, toward the Twin Towers, which Spielberg had digitally added to the shot. — Josh Rottenberg

‘United 93’ (2006)

A scene from the movie “United 93.”

(Jonathan Olley / Universal Pictures)

Five years after 9/11, it still wasn’t clear whether audiences were ready for a Hollywood movie that directly re-created the attacks. Director Paul Greengrass, then most recently of “The Bourne Supremacy,” took on the hijacked flight whose passengers fought back before it crashed in Pennsylvania. He used a largely unknown cast and shot with an almost documentary immediacy, cutting between the plane and air-traffic controllers trying to make sense of what was happening. There’s no movie star to take charge, and Greengrass doesn’t inflate the passengers into larger-than-life heroes. We simply watch as they piece together the situation from phone calls and scraps of information and realize what they have to do. We know from the beginning that none of them will survive. Watching them slowly come to that realization is what makes “United 93” so devastating. — J. Rottenberg

‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)

Christian Bale in the movie “The Dark Knight.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

It was probably inevitable that the anxieties of the post-9/11 era would find their way into a Batman movie. In “The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan fills Gotham with bombings, acts of mass surveillance and questions about how far is too far. Heath Ledger’s Joker is an enemy who doesn’t play by the rules, attacking the city with no clear political goal beyond creating panic and chaos. Christian Bale’s Batman, meanwhile, builds a Patriot Act-like system that turns every cellphone in Gotham into a tracking device and uses increasingly brutal methods to stop him. Nolan folds all of that into a hugely entertaining superhero movie without turning it into a lecture. — J. Rottenberg

‘Man on Wire’ (2008)

Philippe Petit, as seen in the documentary “Man on Wire.”

(Jean-Louis Blondeau / Polaris)

By the time James Marsh’s Oscar-winning documentary arrived in 2008, the Twin Towers had been gone for seven years. The film recounts French high-wire artist Philippe Petit’s astonishing 1974 stunt, in which he and a small band of co-conspirators secretly rigged a cable between the towers, allowing Petit to walk high above lower Manhattan. The movie never needs to mention 9/11 to feel devastating. We already know what became of those buildings. Watching Petit step onto the wire lets us see them differently, not as the site of catastrophe but as the setting for something beautiful and absurdly daring. A ghostly montage of the Twin Towers being constructed, set to composer Michael Nyman’s “Fish Beach,” brought New Yorkers to tears. For me, that feeling is also personal. I was living in New York on 9/11 and had been at an outdoor concert in the plaza beneath the towers just weeks before the attacks, so there was something especially moving about seeing them again as part of the city’s everyday life. — J. Rottenberg

‘The Hurt Locker’ (2009)

Anthony Mackie, left, and Jeremy Renner in the movie “The Hurt Locker.”

(Jonathan Olley / Summit Entertainment)

Has there ever been a better cinematic metaphor for the War on Terror than Jeremy Renner in a bomb suit, kneeling over a device in a Baghdad street while everyone around him scans the rooftops for danger? Kathryn Bigelow’s film narrows the Iraq War down to the nerve-shredding work of an explosives-disposal unit, with Renner’s Staff Sgt. William James almost eerily comfortable in situations that terrify everyone around him. The suspense often comes down to the simplest question: Is this thing going to blow up? Bigelow, the action expert behind “Point Break” and “Strange Days,” mostly leaves the larger politics offscreen and stays with the men doing the dangerous work, their detachment a survival tactic. Though initially little-seen, “The Hurt Locker” pulled off its own improbable feat, becoming, at the time, the lowest-grossing movie to ever win Oscar’s best picture — while Bigelow became the first woman ever to win best director. — J. Rottenberg

‘Margaret’ (2011)

Anna Paquin and Matt Damon in the movie “Margaret.”

(Myles Aronowitz / 20th Century Fox)

Kenneth Lonergan shot this seething, richly authentic New York City drama in 2005, when the rawness of post-9/11 NYC was already a part of everyday life. But the trauma feels ingrained in every frame, and there are shots of wary street life — an occasional flinch or look upward — that New Yorkers could watch and think: Yes, that’s what it felt like. The plot itself concerns a teenage girl, Lisa (Anna Paquin, never better), whose hyperdramatic tendencies are both recognizable and lovable. She is involved in a bus accident that results in a fatality and, with the crusading passion that so many people felt after 9/11, decides to get involved as a witness and truth-teller. The need to fix things — amid so much that was unfixable — is a marker of all the movies on this list. — J. Rothkopf

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (2012)

Jessica Chastain, center, in the movie “Zero Dark Thirty.”

(Jonathan Olley / Columbia Pictures)

Perhaps the most explicit film on our list, Kathryn Bigelow’s daring military procedural about the 2011 midnight raid that took out Osama bin Laden was a political hot potato in its moment. Now with distance, it impresses as a skilled piece of political moviemaking, one that captures the era’s sense of moral compromise and queasy vengeance. It contains scenes of torture and goes deeply into the CIA’s planning and execution of the operation — choices that remain provocative. But the movie’s most lingering piece of drama is a silent shot of one woman crying in a cargo plane: a high-level analyst played by Jessica Chastain, who has accomplished the unthinkable but doesn’t feel relief. The fight will not end. Only a filmmaker who had just won Oscars and made history would have been granted the artistic freedom to make this movie, arguably Bigelow’s finest. — J. Rothkopf