Film captures NYC’s perpetual comebacks

At 9 a.m. one Tuesday, I was phoning Ric Burns, a gifted filmmaker.
His “New York: A Documentary Film” was finally wrapping up. The first five parts aired in 1999, showing a city that was merely created for commerce … then somehow became a cultural-social core for the world. Now, two years later, the final two chapters were ready.
It was a fascinating film, but during the interview, I kept noticing a commotion in the newsroom: At 8:46 and 9:03 a.m., planes had crashed into the World Trade Center.
In the weeks that followed, people would ignore most other things … including Burns’ films, which aired Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. A quarter-century later, he’s put things back in order; the new final chapters — spanning 9/11 and much more — air from 9-11 p.m. Monday and Tuesday (Sept. 20-21) on PBS.
The first night has two big themes: There’s immigration, which it sees as a continuous refreshing and energizing; as a neighborhood sags, it might get a fresh burst of ethnic energy. And there’s crime, with a surprising hero.
Jack Maple was a transit cop, given to quirky fashions — bow ties and bowler hats and such — and an eccentric belief that computers could help stop crime. His methods worked for the subways, then for the entire city, then for others around the country.
It’s an intriging portrait of a man who died of cancer in 48 and was often overlooked. But the second night is the compelling one.
Here was a place walloped by the attacks in 2001 … then by the near-collapse of Wall Street in 2008 … then by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 … then by the pandemic, which by 2020 left images of a city of the dead.
Here were waves of tragedy, each followed by a resurgence. That story is told beautifully, wrapping up a documentary that was decades in the making.