How best to convey the horror of September 11, 2001: fiction or fact?

On Tuesday, I saw World Trade Center, the new, big-guns Oliver Stone movie about the date I will continue not to call 9/11. The night before, I saw The Miracle of Stairwell B on Channel 4, an hour-long documentary (in a week that's full of them) with a similar true story at its heart but told without recourse to dramatisation. In many ways, it was more effective at doing the same job, and did so with less fuss, and a lot less money.

Stone's movie - whose mawkish, sensational trailer had already given me the willies ("the world saw evil that day" - did they?) - concentrates, with admirable economy, on the emergency services trapped beneath the wreckage after the collapse of the North Tower on September 11, 2001, specifically a small group of Port Authority policemen. I won't say what happens, in case you don't know the true story it's based on. Needless to say, much of the action occurs after the collapse ie. after the action.

I have complicated feelings about September 11 - not least because of the carnage it paved the way for in the Middle East and beyond - but I am drawn to it as a subject matter. I was nauseated by the press coverage that followed it, but now that the dust has, literally, settled, it's possible to see that it did change the world, as the media and politicians predicted, albeit perhaps not in quite the same way. There are some who believe it's "too soon" for feature films on the subject. I respect their view. But, as with United 93, families of those involved have been consulted on World Trade Center, so you have to respect their judgement too. (A widow of one of the officers who died has objected to the portrayal.)

As a disaster movie nut, this film is tailor-made to appease me, with equilibrium-shattering catastrophe, spectacle, peril and rescue, but the fact that it really happened makes any pleasure from the medium voyeuristic. (So, you might say, why make it exciting and melodramatic?) And for all its respect and restraint for those who lived or died on the Big Day, Oliver Stone has still made a disaster movie that's shot and designed to thrill and involve and unnerve. For my money, as an action movie, there's a lot of inaction. It feels churlish to complain, and in fact, the scenes under the rubble are played out with much less cheese than I'd expected. Nic Cage, usually so preposterous, is quite low key. Mind you, they had to immobilise him to make him that way. The waiting wives, played by Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal, are exceptionally good. If there's a problem with the film, it's that the opening is so good (New York awakes on an ordinary day; extraordinary event occurs; people jump to it), once the towers are down, the story has a built-in lull. Also, although it's factually correct, the pivot for the rescue is unbelievable. If I hadn't read of its apparent veracity, I would have put it down to melodramatic licence. You'll have to judge for yourselves. Here is the news: it's nothing like as bad as I had feared. And the only stars and stripes hangs forlornly from a pole. No fluttering.



Stairwell B, where the "miracle" occurred (and I say let's not allow religion into a structural anomaly), saw 12 firemen, one police officer and one civilian survive the collapse of the North Tower. The firemen had stopped to help escort Josephine Harris and it was this that saved them. The documentary was based on testimony from the survivors, a commendably doughty but self-effacing bunch of Noo Yawkers from Engine Company 16, Engine Company 39, Ladder 6, the 11th Battalion and Port Authority Police K-9 Unit. Some of them were tearful as they remembered preparing to die, others tight-lipped and practical, but all conveyed the insanity of that day and their particular ordeal. Real footage was mixed in to illustrate, but clearly not of the "miracle" in question. You had to imagine that. And that's why it was such a good programme. Who's going to dispute the recollections of the actual protagonists? Their testimonies even backed each other up. This was what really happened, not a dramatic reconstruction. Though it was mainly guys (and one woman) talking, it was moving, arresting and really bloody scary. You got to know characters like Battalion Chief Rich Picciotto, and firefighters Mickey Kross, Jim McGlynn, Michael Meldrum and Sal D'Agastino. No actors needed to make these men dramatic.

I could watch September 11 documentaries all week. Which is handy. I know I'm not going to see any footage that hasn't been shown a million times, but this doesn't reduce the power of those images. What I don't need is guff about evil and heroes and "America is at war", nor the creeping feeling that the 2,749 who died on September 11,m 2001, are somehow the most important casualties in any conflict or act of aggression ever perpetrated. The most powerful stories are those of people doing their job, and getting through it. The Miracle Of Stairwell B, despite the m-word in the title, was a plain-speaking document about an amazing occurence. No bugles. No fluttering flags. World Trade Center, without giving anything away, ends with applause and stirring music and slow motion and a setting sun, and ultimately, I would argue, subtracts from our understanding.