25th Hour | The Battery — Two Columns of Light Where the Towers Stood

Before the story starts, there is the sky. The credit sequence of 25th Hour is a run of still, patient shots of downtown Manhattan with two columns of light standing where the towers used to be, and Terence Blanchard's score underneath — mournful first, then defiant, then something harder to name. Nobody speaks. Lee holds the audience in front of the absence for a full two minutes before he lets the plot begin, and the film never really leaves that mood behind.

The beams are Tribute in Light, eighty-eight searchlights arranged in two squares and aimed straight up from Lower Manhattan. They were first lit on 11 March 2002, six months to the day after the attacks, ran for a month, and have come back every 11 September since, burning from dusk until dawn. On a clear night the columns can be picked out sixty miles away.

The Battery is where to stand for them. It is a public park at the southern tip of the island, open all hours, harbour on one side and the financial district climbing behind you. Any night of the year the view earns the walk. On the eleventh of September the light goes up at dusk and, for a few seconds, everyone on the promenade turns and looks the same direction at once.