(2004, dir. William Basinski)
In Disintegration Loop 1.1, William Basinski pulls you into a dream, a mundane and yet surreal verite depiction of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, as the smoke rises through the city, this movement being the only action in the film. This bareness is mournful, which after a whole day of dealing it’s toll on the people of New York City, must’ve been a miserable reverie of an existence. There’s no direct signs of life, only the lights on the building at the bottom of the frame, and the recent deaths noted by the destruction of that day. There is, however, a single helicopter (perhaps a news helicopter, considering it was still so early in the recovery efforts) that flys across the screen twice, keeping its distance from the smoke, perhaps even being afraid of coming too close, of physically and spiritually aligning themselves with the utter morbidity of what they were witnessing transfer from a national atrocity to an unanswered challenge and a set of questions for perhaps none other than the almighty.
Disintegration Loop 1.1 is dedicated to the victims of the attacks, as a sense of honoring the immediate past, but considering the onslaught of domestic islamiphobia and warmongering that would lead to wars that’ve only recently started to truly end, taking the lives of countless soldiers and citizens alike, and raising endless ethical questions, I believe that this film also acts as a dreary realization of what is to come; more death, more depression, and more somberness but put onto others. Questions about this eventful days, and the seemingly infinite effects and causations since then, make this an especially haunting piece.
The music is beautiful in both timbre and it’s hyper-minimalism. It is a perfect soundtrack for what it is, depicting the disintegration of both the buildings themselves, but also life as we knew it in America (and in many senses across the world) as we would know it. As someone who isn’t even old enough to remember 9/11, this still haunts me and gets to me emotionally. It’s a powerful and pungent piece of art, an experience and a meditation I recommend to everyone.