United 93

[nerdanel]

Of all of the events of 9/11, I am the most skeptical about what supposedly happened to Flight 93.

To an extent, I too share this skepticism.

But even assuming Whistler's point - that this is the story of American heroes who did exactly as the most popular version indicates they did...

I can't get my mind around the idea of filing into a popular movie theater - AMC or Loews - on a Friday night to watch this movie alongside people crunching popcorn and drinking Coke. Even for those of us who were hundreds of miles removed from the events that day...

Maybe this is more true for those of us who lived on the East Coast then, but it felt like our lives were touched in a million different ways that day. One of my closest friends lost her brother in law (WTC), and has never been the same - she is now a hardened conservative with a great deal of hate and xenophobia she had never felt. Her daughter, now eight, still asks why her uncle went far away and whether he will be back soon. I work for a New York-based employer; most of the attorneys and some of the support staff at my office were right off Wall Street that day. For a couple, 9/11/01 was supposed to have been their second day of orientation - instead, the firm closed while people discovered that their relatives were missing, then dead. I still remember staying with one of my ghost-white friends as she tried for hours to get through to her father who worked one block from the WTC, and the phone lines jammed. And most on point about this movie, one of my family's friends, a man my sister and I call "uncle", had a ticket for United 93 itself...by pure, pure happenstance - the most spur of the moment decision - he decided to go home to his wife one night early.

I can't stand the thought of watching a movie that will make me wonder what it would've been like if HE was one of these "American heroes". It is too soon. Maybe far from now, the popcorn will not seem so grating.

[Primula Baggins]

I respect your feelings, Nel, but you were closer to events than a lot of people in this country. It may be that what is too soon for you, is soon enough for many others. At a certain point many people are not just ready but willing to revisit, reconsider, and discuss a traumatic event.

I guess I wouldn't be astonished to learn that Flight 93 was shot down; there would certainly have been reason to do so. But we don't, at this point, know that, and the film was based as far as possible on what we do know.

I'm not even sure what the government would stand to gain from covering up their act, if it was theirs; they came in for a lot of criticism after the fact because they had not shot down some of the planes. I think most people would see downing Flight 93 as a tragic necessity.

[Lidless]

This is one conspiracy theory that holds up for me. The others are of hugely sinister forces working in the shadows, being able to manipulate clouds or planting explosives in the WTC and bringing it down perfectly within an hour of the planes hitting.

This one has an element of realism about it. Planes already hijacked being thrown into buildings like flying wrecking balls, and there is still one up there? To me I see no practical alternative to U93 being shot down over a relatively uninhabited area.

Sure it makes a great story about the passengers overcoming the terrorists, and maybe stories of heroes was needed that day and in the aftermath, as opposed to the tragedy being multiplied by the government admitting that they had to shoot down their own. But once they had said the passengers had brought down the plane themselves, the government had to stick with it. To admit the truth later (or even on the day in question) would send shock-waves from which no government could recover.

I'm sure the movie is sensitively handled, well-filmed and shows respect. I'm just not so sure the great story of courage it is based on actually happened.

[Whistler]

Nel, nobody thinks it is wrong to say "too soon" regarding one's own feelings. What I object to is simply the idea that I should be regarded (not that anyone has said this) as insensitive or vulgar because it is not too soon for me. Each of us must deal with such things as he must, and on his own schedule.

[nerdanel]

What I object to is simply the idea that I should be regarded (not that anyone has said this) as insensitive or vulgar because it is not too soon for me.

That makes sense, but I actually had to reread that twice to understand what you were saying...because it hadn't even occurred to me to view anyone was "insensitive" or "vulgar" for wanting to make this movie or wanting to see it. Are people really saying that? I've been living in my own bubble recently (working, taking night classes, studying until 3 AM), so I hadn't been paying much attention to this stuff - but if the families are on board, "insensitive" doesn't make much sense, and I have heard nothing to suggest that this movie is "vulgar".

Back to this "too soon" business. In other language, it simply means, "Let's discuss this many years from now, when it doesn't really mean that much any more and we can view it as a simple historical curiosity." Intentional or not, this is an effort at trivialization.

Really? You think that some things become historical curiosities given the passage of time? I recently saw a very gripping Holocaust movie that, hm, had more of an impact on me than a mere curiosity. But I think the problem is, regardless of whether the tragedy is five years or sixty years removed...we walk out of that movie theater and back into our lives. As I discussed with my friend in the five minutes before that post-movie glow faded: we file into the theater to watch these movies, these horrendous, terror-filled assaults on groups to which we belong (almost the entire audience in the theater was Jewish, incl. my friend.) We feel deeply outraged and wounded as we witness how people suffered and died simply for possessing an identity that we share with them (in the case of United 93, that would of course be American residency/citizenship.) We walk out, profoundly thoughtful. And then...half an hour later, we go back to being excited about gas prices dipping below $3/gallon or when Pirates of the Caribbean is coming out or the sunny weather or an upcoming vacation.

I don't think the problem is so much "historical curiosity"...I think the problem is that regardless of the impact of the movie on us...99.9% of us leave that impact in the movie theater. Or, put differently, perhaps we treat everything that is not happening to us right at this moment as a historical curiosity. That leaves me wondering what the point is, anyway. Is it enough that we sit in a theater and remember what happened for two hours? I don't know.

[Primula Baggins]

I think we're fortunate that emotional impact fades. But a book or film can have more impact than that. Long after one's emotional response is over, we still remember what we saw or read. A powerful piece of art can make something real to us that never was real before.

To those who experienced the reality, maybe the art is necessarily a trivialization, a lesser thing. But to those who want to understand something that they did not witness, a well-made, carefully researched book or film can offer a key, at least a beginning.

[Whistler]

Yes, nel, that's what we do.

First we watch some Holocaust, and then the credits roll and (thank goodness) that awful thing is over, and we can go out for coffee. The whole process is vulgar by its nature, but what's to be done? We learn to shut things out.

You mentioned Pirates of the Caribbean. A few weeks ago, my wife and I hosted a pirate party for some children. We had the usual cutlasses, hooks, etc. As we were making preparations, I thought about real pirates: They were among the most cruel and horrible creatures ever to pollute the earth. Yet the passage of time has transformed them into harmless and lovable clowns, popular with kids of all ages.

I imagine children gathering, a few hundred years from now, for street gang parties complete with fake uzis and cakes decorated with "crack cocaine." There is really no difference between the two concepts except that one is far removed from us, and one is our present grim reality.

Time dulls everything.

[truehobbit]

The best WWII movies tend to be those that were actually shot in the ruins of the bombed cities.

If the families of the victims are ok with this movie, I see no reason to object.
And I wouldn't put too much trust in Oliver Stone for reliability, after all he usually has an agenda, AFAIK.

Not that I think I'd be interested in either movie.

This confused me, though:

The characters have neither backstories nor "character development" moments

The youth of the suicide bombers really struck me. They are also shown as very, very scared.

What Pearl said sounded to me as if they had just that: backstory and "character development". (And I thought the idea of poor, scared future suicide bombers would be rather sickening to me.)



Edit (because I forgot there was a second page before I posted):

You mentioned Pirates of the Caribbean. A few weeks ago, my wife and I hosted a pirate party for some children. We had the usual cutlasses, hooks, etc. As we were making preparations, I thought about real pirates: They were among the most cruel and horrible creatures ever to pollute the earth. Yet the passage of time has transformed them into harmless and lovable clowns, popular with kids of all ages.

I imagine children gathering, a few hundred years from now, for street gang parties complete with fake uzis and cakes decorated with "crack cocaine." There is really no difference between the two concepts except that one is far removed from us, and one is our present grim reality.

Time dulls everything.

On the one hand I agree: history becomes legend etc, and faraway things sound romantic and thrilling.
On the other hand, I think pirates were romanticised from very early on, maybe because murdering was a more normal part of life in former times (and, after all, a great part of the pirates worked for the government).
So, I think there's a difference there in the possibilities for development of the story.
As there are tendencies even now to romanticise street gangs (gangsta rap etc), I think you could very well be right about the gang-themed parties.

The Holocaust or terrorist attacks, though, I think are a different story. I can't imagine those to be romanticised or, if it were possible, it would already have started. We identify with the victims more than we do in the case of pirates, I think, where we are happy to put ourselves in the role of the aggressor.

Also, even if you do walk out of a Holocaust movie back into normal life, and outwardly function normally again, you don't feel like normal for quite some time afterwards, do you? Having seen a good number of them, I avoid them now, because they tend to leave me depressed and sleepless for days.

(More edits for grammar.)

[Estel]

Back to this "too soon" business. In other language, it simply means, "Let's discuss this many years from now, when it doesn't really mean that much any more and we can view it as a simple historical curiosity." Intentional or not, this is an effort at trivialization.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


In other language it means, "Let's discuss this when victims and families aren't so close the events and the deaths, and don't have to have their heartbreak shoved in their faces so soon to the events and deaths simply for the sake of money."


Saying it is an effort at trivialization,and describing it as you did is the worst twisting of my words I have ever encountered. I am insulted beyond belief that you would say that that is what those words meant when I said them. I cannot even begin to express how much that statement upsets me and is making me cry. To think that I would have so little respect for the victims and the dead, when my entire opinion on the subject is based on having that respect....

To turn what I said into that.... that, of all things?! I have never been so insulted.

I never meant that by what I said. To say that people who say "to soon mean that, is just... wrong. I heard the horrified reaction to the preview by the audience when I was in the theater. It was not the reaction of people who want to trivialize the events in any way. In my case, at least, it was the reaction of a person who could not believe that someone would take an event, so close to the heartbreak itself, and try and make money off of it.




Steve says that this isn't what you meant by that post, and I need to tone my reaction down. I can't though. This is my reaction. I really am sitting here in tears and upset to the point I can barely type.

[Whistler]

No, no, Estel!

I used the phrase "intentional or not" with absolute certainly that NOT would apply in the case of anybody I would care to speak with. I apologize profusely for not making that point clearly, but I assumed it would go without saying. I meant that this would be the effect upon the lazy and largely clueless people who would rather tune out anything they find too unpleasant to think about. I meant that the rest of us must not allow them to do that in our efforts to respect the dead.

Again, my heartfelt apologies to you and to Steve. Never would it have flashed through my mind that you could have meant anything so horrid. That's why I felt it unnecessary to drive the point home.

Really, I am deeply grieved that my careless words have had this effect upon you. Know (and I did say this earlier) that I understand and respect the validity of your view as well, even if mine is a bit different.

And even so, my opinion is based entirely upon the support of the victims' families. Had they objected, I would agree that the film should not have been made for the sake of money or even some loftier goal.

[Jnyusa]

I'm afraid I fall in on the side of Alatar, Voronwë, nel, Lidless and Estel on this one. I don't like it at all that this movie was made, and my distaste has nothing to do with conspiracy theories as to whether the plane was shot down. I don't think that it was shot down.

1. We do have a vague, very vague idea of what happened aboard that flight. Filling in the details must necessarily be speculative, and as a matter of principle I don't like building documentary style narratives around speculative events.

There are some websites that did a fairly careful analysis of how Michael Moore constructed the successive scenes of Bowling for Columbine to make it look as if the NRA was targetting cities where particularlly heinous gun deaths had occurred. They totally convinced me that his oscar for documentary should be taken away from him. Similarly, in Farenheit 9/11 I was able to spot one deliberate deception because I happen to know from personal experience how the federal government handles such situations. It is likely that there are others.

"Docudrama" is the most detestable genre in existence today, imho. It takes advantage of people's desire to discordant facts tied into a coherent narrative. It has neither the rigor of documentary nor the transparency of fiction.

(I won't see Oliver Stone's movie either, but that's beside the point.)

2. When you mythologize an uninterpretable event so that henceforth one preferred interpretation will prevail, that is propaganda. Pure and simple. This movie is propaganda.

There are so many unanswered questions about 9/11 -- not the conspiracy stuff but the simply question of executive and military competence, we should not be diverted from our continuing demand for an objective evaluation. Just as when the "let's roll" guy's wife went on her national speaking tour, and people wrote poems and songs entitled "let's roll" ... all of that was a media-orchestrated diversion that exploited this one woman's loss. Not a cover-up, a diversion. We'll get one upbeat human interest story out of this mess if it kills us. The biggest event of 2001 and there was just nothing in it for the Talk Show hosts ... oh wait! Flight 93!

This movie is a similar diversion. It tells us that hard questions have already been answered when in fact they haven't even been asked.

I'm sorry but I detest the whole concept behind this movie.

Jn

[Estel]

Whistler. It was my mistake



In my mind, the movies trivialize the event, they don't discuss it. They take peoples heartbreak over an event - not just the victims, but the nations - and turn it into entertainment for the sake of money. It seems like a technological way of "rubber-necking" as it were.


What Jny said to - she expresses it so much better than I could.

[Whistler]

Jn says everything better than everybody.

[vison]

Sorry, can't agree. Voices cry out to be heard. We might not like the sound of those voices, we might not like the words they say.

Many now living remember these events.

[Primula Baggins]

vison,

The fact is that we will never know the truth of some of these events. And a human way to deal with trauma is to try to fit it into a narrative that has meaning. I don't think people who are trying to do that must necessarily deserve contempt.

They may not even be wrong.

[Alatar]

I'll say no more on this subject except to state that I'm more than a little annoyed at the derision and scorn heaped in my direction for my views on this movie. I am not a conspiracy theorist and to make smart remarks about Elvis and JFK suggests that I'm too stupid to seperate fact from fiction. I would have thought you had more respect for me than that.

Apparently not.

[Lidless]

Voices cry out to be heard. We might not like the sound of those voices, we might not like the words they say.

Many now living remember these events.

Are they the events though? Was U93 shot down? If it was, this film stifles those voices.

[Alys]

I doubt I'll be seeing either of the two films, I feel like others here and would be uneasy about deriving any sort of 'entertainment' from events that are still so fresh and raw in the collective mind. But as others have also said, we all heal over at different speeds, so I have no issues with others seeing them, especially as the families seem to approve.

Oh and I'm also not a conspiracy theorist, far from it, but I have to agree with Alatar to some extent and wouldn't be shocked if there was more to the United93 story than the official version. I also have no doubt that there were some real American heros that day and every other day for that matter, so it's not that I find it irksome to admit that either. Frankly I find the implication of anti-Americanism somewhat unhelpful.

[JewelSong]

Wow. I didn't realize this issue was such a difficult one for so many people.

My son saw "United 93" and came away deeply moved and very sobered. Everything I have read praises it as a movie. Is it "true?" Well, they created the story using the transcripts of the phone conversations made during the last 45 minutes of the flight, and what they knew about the terrorists and the day itself.

The fact that the movie was made with the cooperation and the blessing of the families does make a difference to me.

I do think that if Flight 93 had been shot down, the government would have stated this...simply because it would have showed that they were doing something instead of sitting around with their collective thumbs up their behinds. In fact, the big question afterwards was "WHY wasn't the flight shot down?"

I do not think the government is capable of the massive amount of subterfuge (and creativity) necessary to invent a story of phone calls and passenger's actions. Every single family would have had to be convinced/bought off and sworn to secrecy forever. Actors would have had to be hired to make fake phone calls. Too many people would have had to be involved in the cover-up. Someone involved would spill the story.

I think Flight 93 likely should have been shot down; and I do think that was the plan. But the government here was in fact, caught with its pants down, and was totally unprepared to deal with anything like 9/11.

Had the flight lasted longer, I have no doubt that it would have been shot down. But I think it was, in fact, brought down by the passengers. I also think that, because of this and because of 9/11, no hijacker will ever again go unchallenged and simply have his demands met without resistance. That used to be the accepted thing - just "do what they say and no one gets hurt." Now...well, I think people won't sit meekly and let things happen, even if the hijackers have guns/bombs. The era of "traditional" hijacking is over.

[Lidless]

JewelSong,

I don't think anyone seriously disputes that the calls were real and that much of what is in the film is therefore probably correct. I'm just not sure the last 30 minutes of the movie will be close to the truth.