Letters to the Editor
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Conspiracy Theories
Fascinating string of letters.
I doubt I'd see this film; I don't think I want or need those images in my brain. I choose carefully what I ingest mentally.
I see there's a dispute about the cell phone calls. I remember seeing on TV the tearful mother of Mark Bingham, one of the Flight 93 victims, telling about her son's phone call. Are there some who believe that these calls were made by government folks imitating loved one's voices?? I try to keep an open mind, but the effort necessary to carry off such a huge hoax seems way past the limited resources of "those people."
And to those who say there was no entry by passengers into the cockpit -- do they maintain that the hijackers themselves crashed the plane on purpose in this anonymous Pennsylvania field? Or did our own government supposedly shoot it out of the sky?
I was alive during Vietnam and Watergate (dating myself, here) and I remember that as the death of naivete and any basic trust in the administration. I don't trust the current buffoons as far as I could throw them, but I think it's beyond the scope of possibility that 9-11 is simply one big ball of propaganda. Sure Dubya and company wanted to attack Iraq, but no one is capable of this level of conspiracy.
My Dad, 87 tomorrow, relates that there were those who saw the attack at Pearl Harbor as a painful but convenient impetus for us to finally enter WWII.
Let history judget this film. I can't fault Greengrass for trying to bring his art to exploring the most traumatic event in our recent past.
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Hmmm...
Who financed this film? The GOP? Fox News?
Seems like the perfect way to stir sentiment before the mid-terms.
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My Two Cents
I don't have a problem with this movie being made. I fully believe in freedom of speech and creativity. However, I think the biggest problem with this film is that people are going to take it as the Gospel instead of a ficitionalised even of an acutal event. As one poster pointed out, all the evidence we have suggests that the passengers never made it into the cockpit.
While it's sad that these people died their deaths are no more tragic than the other people who lost their lives on 9/11 or the thousands of soliders and civilians who have died in Iraq.
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I Don't Know If I'm Ready...
To see it. And since my opinions on movies seem to align many times with Steph's, maybe I should just get it on DVD, keep it unopened in shrink wrap, until I can watch.
One point strikes me. What was the point in making us, the viewers, aware of whom the terrorists were early on? It have been more effective for us to discover their identities along with the passengers, thereby engaging us with the question "what would you have done in this situation?" type scenario.
We all know what happened TO the flight, we want to be engaged with what happened ON the flight.
The "Flight of Martyrs" Flight 93's sacrfice can perhaps be thought of better in this context. They died, not for a cause, but believing in a purpose - which was to spare the deaths of those whom the terrorists intended to take along with all of them.
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Have to question why this film is needed
I've seen several news commentators on television questioing why it's taken four and a half years for a movie about 9/11 to come out - as if four and a half years is such a great length of time. One commmentator insisted that as a nation we are forgetting what happened that day. That we as a whole are forgetting that over 3,000 people died.
I wish that I could forget. I lost a good friend who had worked in the World Trade Center who's office was on one of the upper floors above where the plane hit. I wish that I could stop wondering if he died quickly or if he had to sit there unable to escape. I look at the NYC skyline and see the gaping hole where the Twin Towers used to be.
Maybe for people in other states who were not directly or personally affected may gain something from this, and I'm sure that some family members of those who died on 9/11 might gain some comfort at seeing their losses publicly recognized, but I have the distinct feeling that many NYers will not be able to sit through this film. It is still too close to the heart for us. We are hardly in the position to be forgetting any time soon.
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Flight recorder shows who crashed plane
The hijackers brought the plane down when it was apparent to them that the passengers had revolted. Transcripts of flight 93's voice recorder were released April 12 and can be found online.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/12/AR2006041201293.html
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Greengrass
I would just like to add for those who are attacking Greengrass’ intentions, I believe that he is about as far away from a rabid Fox News yokel as you can get. His film based on Bloody Sunday is just as good as Stephanie says it is. It’s enormously powerful and brilliantly made. In all of his interviews, he has come across as calm, rigorous in his attempts at fairness and clear-sighted about the events and his interpretation of them. This isn’t something I would say about a lot of filmmakers, but I believe him to have honourable intentions.
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You say "Too soon." Well, when then?
Here's a stop-the-presses moment: a Hollywood movie is thought to be insensitive, exploitive, and poorly-timed. From all that I've read, the director has taken exceptional pains with the feelings of those closest to the murdered victims, as Ms Zacharek's second and third paragraphs show. I honor the memmory of all that occured on that dread day, but if today, the 26th of April, is too soon, can someone give me an approximate date when your sensitivities will allow me to see a movie (for God's sake, a movie!)? And what if you heal a little quicker than someone else? Shall we take a poll to determine when at long last this nation stops walking in lock-step?
To me, it seems as if people are only reflexively appalled by the thought of dramatizing the events of the day -- and as awful and epochal as the day was, we need to move on. Everyone (not necessarily referring to any LWs in particular, but people in general) seems terrified to admit that, well, yeah, life goes on. Admitting so is not like spitting in the eye of those whose grief is real; it is a natural part of the process. If the events of 9/11 still torture you to a degree that you cannot even contemplate its being dramatized, then some more active form of therapy besides letter-writing might be in order.
To me, all the anxiety about the movie seems to be more knee-jerk than authentic. There was little outrage when the two or three made-for-TV movies were shown. Perhaps television movies are deemed unworthy of the thoughtful criticism the readers of Salon consider themselves capable of. Instead of yelling "Too soon" during the previews for the movie, people should shout out "Too soon for me, thanks, but perhaps it is time that we begin to memorialize those whose actions we so steadfastly admire in ways other than the endless bickering in New York and the repellent scare-mongering in Washington, and let's increase port security and make airport screening a real test instead of the laughable exercise in making old ladies undress!"