United 93
So last night I saw United 93...not "Flight 93" as I called it yesterday.
I was nervous about seeing the movie because just hearing my father talk about it (vaguely mind you) gave me goosebumps and stung my eyes. Quite as I had expected, the opening credits rolled and the goosebumps and stinging eyes made another appearance, but I think this was all out of aprehension.
The movie was definately intense. The entire time I was chewing my nails or taking deep, stress-relieving breaths. A lot of people say that this movie was made too soon. I have to admit, the thought crossed my mind once or twice. But I realized during this movie that I now don't believe 75 years could have gone by before I went to see this movie and had less of a reaction. I haven't thought about 9/11 and really felt the way I felt in the weeks and months after it happened for a very long time, and last night, it was like it had just happened all over again.
I'm not saying all of this to scare people from seeing it. I think if you think you want to, then definately go. It was an excellent film. In fact, what I'm trying to do is actually defend the reality of the movie being made a mere 4 years after the event. As I said before, the movie could be made decades from now, and anyone who witnessed that moment in history will probably immediately be right back there.
That being said, I'll take a few minutes to give an actual review...without giving too much of the details away. One of the things I realized on the drive home was that I knew nobody's name (first or last) leaving that theatre. I think maybe one character at National Flight Control was named, but I didn't remember it. There was no character development, no backstories to make you feel for them. Each of the characters is a complete stranger in the beginnning and a complete stranger in the end, and in a way, this makes you identify with them so much more. It makes you think, that could have been me, that could have been my mother/father/cousin/friend/lover/...anything. It really gives that sense that this happened to the entire country, it affected everyone.
There were scenes at flight control that were absolutely mind-blowing. Its hard to comprehend that all of the events of this movie happened within an hour, maybe two. There is a realization that as much as we, the people, had no idea what was going on, the people working to stop what was happenening were just as confused as we were.
The saddest scenes involved phone calls from the people on the planes to their loves ones. When I first saw the preview months ago, this was all the preview was. It was a blinking plane on a radar screen with voices in the background on the phone. This was what got me the most.
The mood in the theatre when the credits started rolling was very somber. The people were quiet. They walked slowly. Walking out the door into the huge mass of teenagers that hang out at the mall on Friday nights was a bit surreal. I don't want to make a profound statement on the importance of this movie, that people are forgetting, that we've become ignorant in our safe, blissful lives. What I did get out of this movie was a forgotten sense of unity (interesting that the plane was United 93). There was a sense of unity, not only on the screen among the people working together to deal with the events of one horrifying day, but also in the seats among the people recalling the pain an entire nation went through collectively. As corny as it sounds, I think that realizing that we all have pain, that we all suffer, that we all experience loss and fear and despair reminds us that we're never alone.
I was nervous about seeing the movie because just hearing my father talk about it (vaguely mind you) gave me goosebumps and stung my eyes. Quite as I had expected, the opening credits rolled and the goosebumps and stinging eyes made another appearance, but I think this was all out of aprehension.
The movie was definately intense. The entire time I was chewing my nails or taking deep, stress-relieving breaths. A lot of people say that this movie was made too soon. I have to admit, the thought crossed my mind once or twice. But I realized during this movie that I now don't believe 75 years could have gone by before I went to see this movie and had less of a reaction. I haven't thought about 9/11 and really felt the way I felt in the weeks and months after it happened for a very long time, and last night, it was like it had just happened all over again.
I'm not saying all of this to scare people from seeing it. I think if you think you want to, then definately go. It was an excellent film. In fact, what I'm trying to do is actually defend the reality of the movie being made a mere 4 years after the event. As I said before, the movie could be made decades from now, and anyone who witnessed that moment in history will probably immediately be right back there.
That being said, I'll take a few minutes to give an actual review...without giving too much of the details away. One of the things I realized on the drive home was that I knew nobody's name (first or last) leaving that theatre. I think maybe one character at National Flight Control was named, but I didn't remember it. There was no character development, no backstories to make you feel for them. Each of the characters is a complete stranger in the beginnning and a complete stranger in the end, and in a way, this makes you identify with them so much more. It makes you think, that could have been me, that could have been my mother/father/cousin/friend/lover/...anything. It really gives that sense that this happened to the entire country, it affected everyone.
There were scenes at flight control that were absolutely mind-blowing. Its hard to comprehend that all of the events of this movie happened within an hour, maybe two. There is a realization that as much as we, the people, had no idea what was going on, the people working to stop what was happenening were just as confused as we were.
The saddest scenes involved phone calls from the people on the planes to their loves ones. When I first saw the preview months ago, this was all the preview was. It was a blinking plane on a radar screen with voices in the background on the phone. This was what got me the most.
The mood in the theatre when the credits started rolling was very somber. The people were quiet. They walked slowly. Walking out the door into the huge mass of teenagers that hang out at the mall on Friday nights was a bit surreal. I don't want to make a profound statement on the importance of this movie, that people are forgetting, that we've become ignorant in our safe, blissful lives. What I did get out of this movie was a forgotten sense of unity (interesting that the plane was United 93). There was a sense of unity, not only on the screen among the people working together to deal with the events of one horrifying day, but also in the seats among the people recalling the pain an entire nation went through collectively. As corny as it sounds, I think that realizing that we all have pain, that we all suffer, that we all experience loss and fear and despair reminds us that we're never alone.
posted by Danielle at 10:11 AM
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