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Just got back from seeing "United 93"
I expect I will have trouble sleeping tonight. The reviews are right. It is gripping and absolutely excruciating. I think it was absolutely respectful, and it did not strike me as exploitive. In fact, it was all the more powerful because it wasn't exploitive but, on the contrary, underplayed, which made the events depicted carry an even greater wallop. But that is my deeply personal reaction.
I cannot tell you whether or not to see it. I think that everyone must decide that for themselves. I believe that there are those who will never be able to see this movie.
I can only tell you that for myself, as painful as it is to sit through, especially the furious and desperate final twenty minutes, I am very very glad that I did.
Edited to add: here is my response to a comment made below by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
minnehaha B, who asked me, extremely reasonably, why on earth I would want to take my knowledge and memories of the event and replace them with a fictional dramatization designed to push all my buttons? I replied:
Another specific reason that I went to see the film is that I just finished reading Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. The book included a discussion of a study of some children at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California "playing the Purdy game." This was a case where a perpetrator named Patrick Purdy stood at a playground's edge and sprayed hundreds of bullets at the children playing there. Five died and twenty-nine were wounded.
In the ensuing months, the "Purdy game" appeared spontaneously in the play of boys and girls at the school, where the children reenacted the tragedy. Sometimes they played it so that the children killed Purdy.
The psychologists figured out that story is part of the way that children heal from PTSD, by emotional re-learning:
I think this movie is partly our nation "playing Purdy" from the trauma of 9/11.
Anyway, the chapter is titled "Trauma and Emotional Relearning," if you'd like to look at it.
Understand: processing by re-telling (and even re-shaping) story is a way I process things. For me, seeing it was the right decision. But I also understand and freely accept that Your Mileage May Vary.
Edited to add again: And do me the courtesy of at least believing that I understand that the movie includes fiction mixed with fact, dammit.
Edited to add again: All right, people. No more comments on this post, if you please. Because, you know, I've just about had enough. Yes, I am being dictatorial, but hey, it's my journal and I get to do that. The ushers are sweeping up the popcorn and the projectionist has left the building. If you would like to discuss this further, please take it to your own journals. Thank you.
I cannot tell you whether or not to see it. I think that everyone must decide that for themselves. I believe that there are those who will never be able to see this movie.
I can only tell you that for myself, as painful as it is to sit through, especially the furious and desperate final twenty minutes, I am very very glad that I did.
Edited to add: here is my response to a comment made below by
minnehaha B, who asked me, extremely reasonably, why on earth I would want to take my knowledge and memories of the event and replace them with a fictional dramatization designed to push all my buttons? I replied:Another specific reason that I went to see the film is that I just finished reading Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. The book included a discussion of a study of some children at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California "playing the Purdy game." This was a case where a perpetrator named Patrick Purdy stood at a playground's edge and sprayed hundreds of bullets at the children playing there. Five died and twenty-nine were wounded.
In the ensuing months, the "Purdy game" appeared spontaneously in the play of boys and girls at the school, where the children reenacted the tragedy. Sometimes they played it so that the children killed Purdy.
The psychologists figured out that story is part of the way that children heal from PTSD, by emotional re-learning:
One way this emotional healing seems to occur spontaneously--at least in children--is through games such as Purdy. These games, played over and over again, let children relive a trauma safely, as play. This allows two avenues for healing: on the one hand, a memory repeats in a context of low anxiety, desensitizing it and allowing a nontraumatized set of responses to become associated with it. Another route to healing is that, in their minds, children can magically give the tragedy another, better outcome: sometimes in playing Purdy, the children kill him, boosting their sense of mastery over that traumatic moment of helplessness."You can argue that I am not a child, and that I didn't actually 'live' through the events of United 93 personally. Very true. But this rang really true to me, and reading this chapter was part of the reason that I went to see the movie. I have always had enormous respect for the healing effects of story and have personally used it for emotional purposes previously myself--witness how I continually return to the same books when I am distressed about something.
I think this movie is partly our nation "playing Purdy" from the trauma of 9/11.
Anyway, the chapter is titled "Trauma and Emotional Relearning," if you'd like to look at it.
Understand: processing by re-telling (and even re-shaping) story is a way I process things. For me, seeing it was the right decision. But I also understand and freely accept that Your Mileage May Vary.
Edited to add again: And do me the courtesy of at least believing that I understand that the movie includes fiction mixed with fact, dammit.
Well, yeah
And, perhaps, to understand when fiction points to truth. Uncle Tom's Cabin wasn't a documentary (not possible at the time, obviously) or a history (entirely possible at the time), and every detail in it was, quite literally, untrue, as it was, well, fiction. And it left out much of what was happening at the time, choosing to portray the worst of slavery that the public would tolerate the representation of.
It did, of course, leave out a lot of routine bad stuff.
But it was, all in all, and with some lacunae, a fair picture of some of what was wrong with the toleration of chattel slavery.
I can imagine some people arguing something to the effect of, "Why would you want to read Mrs. Stowe's latest work. Why get yourself all worked up over something that is fictional -- you'll act as those things really happened, rather than having been made up by some wild-eyed abolitionist fanatic."
Re: Well, yeah
Re: Well, yeah
Historical narratives -- a narrow kind of historical fiction -- aren't exactly uncommon. Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels comes to mind. Shaara wasn't around to record the words (or, for that matter, the thoughts) of his (largely but not totally fictional) characters.
Consider, for a moment, the miniseries Band of Brothers. and the remarkable (nonfiction) book on which it was based. Most -- but not all -- of the characters shown in the series were intended to represent specific real people (all of the 506th PIR soldiers representing real, specific folks; a few of the American officers senior to them were; very few others).
Basically none of the dialogue was contemporaneously recorded, and many of the microincidents were fictional creations (that so-and-so ran into that particular foxhole and had a conversation with that specific other guy, say).
On the other hand, the broad -- and many of the fine -- outlines of what happened, and to whom and when, are supported by the historical record, even though probaby less than 1% if the dialogue is.
Which means that, sure, it's not a documentary or even a recreation -- even though some of the cinematography was done specifically to make it feel like a documentary (the color pallet, some of the camera usage, etc.).
A legitimate criticism, I think, would be -- for either -- that the dialogue or other parts of the movies are inconsistent with what's known about what went on, or misleading. The Band Of Brothers series was criticized -- legitimately -- for the simplistic treatment of Herbert Sobel, which perhaps exaggerated his flaws and pretty much certainly minimized not only his virtues, but what Easy saw as his virtues (the men generally credited him with having trained them well, and made them effective later on; that doesn't come through on the screen).
The onboard dialogue on Flight 93 could be legitimately criticized as being inconsistent with what's known about what went on, if that's the case.
But criticizing the writer of Flight 93 for things like putting invented dialogue in the mouths of the characters is sort of like criticizing a stage production of "Harvey" because the lighting makes the rabbit somewhat difficult to see.