What is the value of a life? A review of Worth

Worth

Directed by Sara Colangelo

Written by Max Borenstein

Based on What Is Life Worth? by Kenneth Feinberg

Produced by Max Borenstein, Marc Butan, Bard Dorros, Sean Sorensen, Michael Sugar, Anthony Katagas, Michael Keaton

Starring Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci, Amy Ryan, Tate Donovan, Shunori Ramanathan, Laura Benanti

Cinematography Pepe Avila del Pino

Edited by Julia Bloch

Music by Nico Muhly

Production companies MadRiver Pictures, Riverstone Pictures, Royal Viking Entertainment, Sugar23, Anonymous Content, Higher Ground Productions

Distributed by Netflix

I tend to avoid films made about the events of September 11th, 2001. The best of them capture the horror and fear we all felt that day, and the worst are propagandistic and mawkish. I don’t need the former and don’t want the latter.

Even though I know he’s actually a gifted and versatile actor, having Michael Keaton in the lead role stopped me in my tracks for a moment. Combining 9/11 with the guy who played Beetlejuice, or worse, Batman, seemed, well, problematic. Of course, by the time I realized that the main character was Michael Keaton, I was a good ten minutes into the movie, and had already figured out that it wasn’t just another ‘terrorists is bad’ flick.

Worth is reflective, nuanced, and deals with bringing justice—not to the terrorists, but to the victims of the people in the tower that died that awful day.

At the strong urging of insurance companies that faced ruin, and a plethora of lawsuits that would clog the courts and drain trillions of dollars over decades, a fund was established to pay out damages to kin of the victims. That would be some 8,000 claimants in all—assuming they all signed up. The fund was designated the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Yes, this is a fictionalized account of true events.

But a formula was devised on the amounts of the settlements offered, based on various criteria as size of surviving family, age of victim and family, and income and projected income of each victim. It was a formula meant to calculate the Worth of each victim, and of course it has inherent flaws and terrible omissions.

Michael Keaton, in the role of real-life Special Master Administrator Kenneth Feinberg, administers this fund. He has 2 years to sign up 80% of the claimants, or the whole process defaults to the courts, a guaranteed loss to everyone except personal injury lawyers. A man rises up to confront him on how the Fund is administered and how the funds are to be disbursed. This man is Charles Wolf, played masterfully by Stanley Tucci.

Feinberg is focused on the financial aspects of the fund. Wolf is focused on greater justice for the victims, including some the fund isn’t designed to help, such as same sex couples or adulterous second families. Wolf was also the first to become aware of the ongoing medical problems thousands of first responders faced created by asbestos and other toxins in the air in the weeks following the collapse of the towers. That was the cause later championed by the comedian Jon Stewart.

It could have been a standard champion-of-the-pipples versus the cruel calculator-bankster conflict, and would have been a very ordinary film for it. But as happened in real life, the fictionalized versions of Feinberg and Wolf are each sensitive to the needs and boundaries of the other, and work hard to craft a solution that both can live with. Its rare for a film to be resolved by reason and compromise, but Worth does just that. The real story is how it happens, and makes for riveting viewing of what normally might be a dry-as-dust conflict.

It’s deep, it’s sensitive, it’s reflective, and it may just be the best film about 9/11 I’ve seen.