Monday at the Movies - September 29, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  I don’t review as many documentaries on here as I should, so I’ll work on rectifying that over the coming months. 

The Woman Who Wasn’t There (2012) – As if the events of September 11 weren’t horrifying enough, this documentary trots out the most grotesque of all the sideshow freaks in the traveling circus of terrorism’s aftermath.  I don’t know how much readers are aware of the story of Tania Head, but whether you know the horrid “twist” (reality mimicking art, in this sense) or not the documentary unfolds with all the building dread and slow-burn anxiety of a well-done psychological horror flick.  In a nutshell (spoilers?) Tania Head lied about being in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and rose to a prominent role in a survivor’s support group, even ousting legitimate survivors in what seems to have been a mad grab for power.  Head herself is only featured in archival footage, having obviously avoided the filmmakers, though as Louis Brandeis said, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”  While the film never provides a rationale for Head’s actions, it does a meticulous job tracing out her web of lies and the inevitable collapse of the charade as more of her friends realize just how severely they had been duped.  This is a very well-made documentary, avoiding the dry recitation of a History Channel special and instead giving Head’s victims – themselves doubly injured, having already survived 9/11 – the floor in a fascinating exposé that has more in common with Hitchcock than Ken Burns.  Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned, the film never answers why someone would fabricate a story like Tania Head did, but perhaps that makes the documentary more effective as a narrative about an ineffably monstrous person.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!