Letters to the Editor
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not interested
It’s not that the movie shouldn’t have been made – it’s that these events are so recent, well remembered and set in a world we all know (an American airport and flight, an office, a pretty blue day) that I wonder who is going to feel a need to have it all played out again. It was enough for me to read the transcripts and news articles and I was on plane in my mind. I don’t need ot want someone to organize the events and paint a picture for me.
With a movie like “Hotel Rawanda” or any movie about WWII there is an education factor – an American viewer is introduced to new people, a different setting and culture that they may not have the background to imagine for themselves. But the events of 9/11 are different because we all know the events that took place and we are all able to make all of the cultural and setting references without the help of a movie. I have always found it very easy, to the point of nightmares and panic attacks, to imagine myself on that flight making my final phone calls that morning. I don’t need any help putting myself on this flight. I can drive myself to tears and panic attacks just thinking about it.
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Careful, Stephanie, or you'll be blacklisted by Broadsheet
"Onboard, the attendants call to one another from across the cabin ("Do you have sugars up there?") or wish out loud that they could be at home with their babies instead of working."
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How could you point out that detail of the film without also including a snide remark about how these flight attendants have been poisoned and brainwashed by the stay-at-home-mom crowd?
You're going to need to have Traister approve all your articles from now on.
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How could Salon fall for this?
How could Salon fall for a movie perpetuating the myth that flight 93 actually went down in a field somewhere in Pennsylvania. Before walking into the theater, remind yourself that cell phones don't work while moving 500mph at 30,000 ft. in the air. Remind yourself there is no picture of the crash site, bodies, or luggage at all. If you believe the phone calls, then you must ask yourself when was the last time you called home and identified yourself to your own mother by your full legal name as printed on your driver's license - twice in the same call. Ask yourself if you had just seen 2 of your coworkers stabbed to death right in front of you, how you could be capable of finding an airphone, calling 911, calmly explaining the situation w/o a quiver in your voice, and do all that w/o getting killed? Are there safe-room/phone-booths on planes?
The only thing more horrific than the subject of this movie is to think about how those people really died. Because if it wasn't from a 500mph impact into the ground, it was probably by the merciless hand of an individual looking at them right in the eye as he explained this was for the good of the country and it's going to hurt him more than it hurts you.
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Risks in fictionalizing an actual event
I think regardless of how "careful" a moviemaker is, there are too many interpretations and judgment calls that must be made when fictionalizing an actual event.
I won't watch this movie. Documentaries, yes. Movies? No.
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art that sucks the life out of you
Stephanie... you ask "What's the value of artistry that sucks the life out of you?" The value is in something I like to call "emotional masturbation". United 93 sounds like the sort of movie you would watch when you want to deliberately trigger a specific set of emotions, and thus the associated physical responses. Other examples include: watching Clue for the 100th time to laugh at "1+2+1+1", or watching When Harry Met Sally so you can cry at Billy Crystal's end speech to Meg Ryan. Some people like to control their emotional responses, and it sounds to me like United 93 would be a great way to trigger that sense of sickening dread that you might otherwise find in modern horror movies.
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It may be painful to watch but...
I cannot understand the view that this movie should not have been made. If someone truly attempts, in good faith, to re-enact events as they happened, based on painstaking interviews with the people involved and as thorough a research job as can be condcuted into an event like this, and there isn't an agenda other than trying as best he can to fill in the necessary blanks with a best guess, then there are all the reasons in the world why this movive should have been made now and not later. The availability of witnesses and relatively fresh recollections, for one. And the availability of lots of people who lived through that day to question the veracity of the film in whole or in part, so that there can be a worthwhile public discussion of the film. The alternative is to wait for a movie like JFK to be made years after the fact, where all you have is competing theories about realty, a generation away from the occurrence, viewed by people who were babies when it happened or weren't around at all.
The description of how this project was accomplished and the initial reactions of the families of the folks on that plane make me think that this was a worthwhile effort, whether I choose to see the film this weekend or in five years on dvd or not at all.
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How egocentric some of us must be
In response to Ann from NYC's post:
If the exception to making a movie about a traumatic world event "too soon" is if there is educational value in it, must the educational value be only to Americans as you imply? Imagine, people in other countries who might actually watch United 93 and find some educational value in it in the same sense that some of us found it in Hotel Rwanda.
Who knows, maybe it will even elicit some empathy, or sympathy, or outrage, or ... from people around the world who aren't too impressed with us right now.
I personally don't have strong feelings about this movie being made. I probably won't see it just b/c I can imagine the emotional wreck I'd be afterward, but maybe those of you who are saying the movie is inappropriate should take a second look at why you're actually saying that, especially if you found value in movies like Hotel Rwanda.