TV Review: ‘Rebirth’ Beautifully Chronicles Our Ability to Heal

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CHICAGO – How do we go on? How do we pick up the pieces after devastation so shocking and damaging that words can hardly do it justice? The great lesson on the ten-year anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11/01 may be that we might have different ways to heal, but we all do it. We move forward. And that ability to go on in the face of unimaginable trauma has rarely been chronicled more beautifully than in Jim Whitaker’s “Rebirth,” a documentary currently on DVD from the great Oscilloscope Studios and airing Sunday night on Showtime. Don’t miss it.

HollywoodChicago.com TV Rating: 4.5/5.0
TV Rating: 4.5/5.0

Even though the film wasn’t complete until recently, Whitaker’s most important filmmaking decision actually came ten years ago. In the days after 9/11, he decided to begin a film about the healing process and chose five people to follow through it. He picked five unique subjects — a widow, a survivor, a firefighter, a construction worker, and a young man who lost his mother in the World Trade Center. And he chose to not just interview them about their experience but to check in on them annually to track how time impacted their journey. Each story is unique and yet contains the same kernel of truth — sometimes, even when we don’t want to, we keep going. Trauma and recovery may be different for you than they are for me, but there is more commonality to the healing process than you might imagine.

Rebirth
Rebirth
Photo credit: Showtime

Whitaker chose well when he picked his five subjects. All of them have interesting stories to tell and some are so emotionally raw and honest that it almost makes the viewer uncomfortable to watch their confessions. And the changes represented year to year can be startling. Watching Nick Chirls, who was in high school when his mother died, become a conflicted and emotionally damaged young man as the years go by is painful because one is reminded of the guiding force of a mother and what happens when that’s gone.

Rebirth
Rebirth
Photo credit: Showtime

By the same token, Tanya Villanueva Tepper is a fascinating story in that she is so emotional in the first interview as she describes learning about the death of her policeman fiancee that the viewer becomes attached to her through concern that she finds happiness again. As she begins to do so with a new family, despite lingering longing for the family she never was allowed to have, we feel joy that she was able to move on. She still feels pain, but she’s found happiness. In many ways, she’s a symbol for the entire country. We look forward, but we never forget.

Not every arc is as inspiring as Tanya’s or Ling Young, an actual survivor horribly burned by the attacks and dealing with physical ramifications through most of the interviews. The men — firefighter Tim Brown and construction worker Bryan Lyons — are clearly suffering deep PTSD. When Brown moves away one year and comments that he realized the reason he didn’t miss anyone in NYC is because everyone he knew there died on 9/11, it’s hard to fathom how he can even get the words out. And the impact of the recovery effort on Bryan and his involvement in the rebuilding have clearly left him a damaged soul.

But the story of “Rebirth” to me is Nick’s. He was just a teenager when evil stole his mother away from him. And his 20s were not an easy time. But this is a smart, determined, fascinating young man. He’s the kind of guy you root for in every single way. And he’s the one you want so badly to give a helping hand and guide him out of the darkness. 9/11 stole so many things from so many people but the complex life that it threw Nick Chirls into is a story not often told. It’s not about the dead, but those who have to go on living.

Whitaker’s film structures its five stories around stunning time-lapse photography of the memorial effort at Ground Zero. The parallel is clear. Just as the physical was being rebuilt, the emotional was being reconstructed as well. I wish his film was a bit more subtle. He too often turns up the score to amplify emotions or uses other filmmaking tricks, but it’s a minor complaint. The fact is that “Rebirth” is at its most powerful when Whitaker allows his subjects to just speak. In so many ways, they speak for all of us.

“Rebirth” was released by Oscilloscope Pictures on DVD on September 6th, 2011 and airs on Showtime on Sunday, September 11, 2011 at 8pm CST.

HollywoodChicago.com content director Brian Tallerico

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

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