Just got back from seeing "United 93"

[pegkerr]

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 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.

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.
Sincerely,
The Management

Comments

Movie tickets

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, Peg paid no money to see this movie. She used my free sneak preview tickets. It doesn't officially open until Friday.

Rob

Re: Movie tickets

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

It's not the money. It's the blatent manipulation. People will remember the vivid movie details better than the actual news details. People will forget which is real and which is made up. People will start replacing the real details with the fake details.

It's bad enough that the news media amplifies terrorist acts and makes them much more effective. It's worse when Hollywood does it.

B

Re: Movie tickets

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

That you repeated it twice in short succession made me think the fact money was being spent was important to you. And therefore the datapoint that money was not spent could also have been of interest.

Rob

Re: Movie tickets

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

The point is that the movie is a for-profit venture, and needs to be understood as such. So yes, the money is important -- but not the $6 that Peg did or did not spend.

B

Re: Movie tickets

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

See my comment to ivyblossom here.

Re: Movie tickets

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I'll stop if you want, but if you consider me enraged then you are projecting way more emotion onto me than I have. I consider this to be an interesting intellectual discussion. I think it has all sorts of generalizations: to the Disney versions of stories (compare The Little Mermaid with the real one), to historical fiction (I wonder how much of Neal Stephenson's creations will become generally accepted fact), to the movie version of Lord of the Rings.

I personally didn't, and still don't, care if you saw the movie or not. It never occured to me that this conversation was about that.

B

Re: Movie tickets

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

There was a real Little Mermaid?

(Well, that's what it seemed that you were saying!)

I'd be interested in hearing (though perhaps pegkerr would rather we did it elsewhere) your generalizations. IMHO, a new and different version of a fantasy/myth-based fictional story, an admittedly fictionalized version of historical events, and a purportedly accurate (to the extent it can possibly be known) story of historical events are very different critters.

Re: Movie tickets

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"There was a real Little Mermaid?"

I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you don't actually want an answer to this question.

"IMHO, a new and different version of a fantasy/myth-based fictional story, an admittedly fictionalized version of historical events, and a purportedly accurate (to the extent it can possibly be known) story of historical events are very different critters."

I think there are differences, but that they're all different instantiations of the same general issue.

B

Re: Movie tickets

[laurel]

I take it you mean the amplification is worse when Hollywood does it, not that it's a worse thing that Hollywood does it.

I think people already are confused about facts because the supposed facts differ depending on which news outlet you pay attention to (as well as which radio shows you listen to or weblogs you read). There's the whole "Let's Roll" thing and all sorts of stories that seem to have been tweaked one way or another.

Of course there are actual transcripts of some stuff that happened on the plane and at air traffic control, etc. and one can hope that hasn't been messed with by anyone.

Anyway. Some critics and viewers will say they feel the movie is really accurate, others will say it isn't-- people will sometimes believe these assessments without knowing how these assessments were made (how much does the critic know about what really happened? have they read the transcriptss?). And so on.

Hmmm. I wonder if the History Channel will do a History vs. Hollywood episode about this movie. If you aren't familiar with the show, it's very much what it sounds like-- a bunch of historians point out differences between fact and the fictionalized version of it. I usually find the show fascinating.

Of course any time I see a movie or show based on or about some real life occurence, it just makes me incredibly curious about what actually happened and I usually end up doing research after the fact. But then I grew up in a household where my Dad would often point out inaccuracies in movies and applaud movies that fit history better, etc.

It's hard for me to imagine people would see a movie and have that replace their own personal recollections, I would think they'd be more critical of the movie if they lived through or felt they knew the story. I'm sure it does happen tho.


There were already TV movies about Flight 93, I didn't screen it though. I believe one was more documentary and one was more Tv movie.

Re: Movie tickets

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"It's hard for me to imagine people would see a movie and have that replace their own personal recollections."

Bet you anything that will happen, often. Of course the movie will replace their own personal recollections. The movie will be more vivid. The movie will be more exciting. The movie will be true-to-life, much more than life itself. No one's personal recollections include being on that airplane; they're just stories from here and there, glued together with suppositions and hypotheticals. Of course the movie will replace that. How could it not?

B

Re: Movie tickets

[laurel]

Of course the movie will replace that. How could it not?

Interesting. I'm thinking "how could it, it's just a movie?"

I mean, no one survived that crash. No one is alive who knows what really happened. Yes, there is a recording of some of what happened, but the recording covers just a small part of what transpired. So it stands to reason that the movie doesn't tell all, it's just guesses. (I read an article somewhere-- maybe from the IMDB someplace-- that the actors playing the roles of passengers were given background info and whatever facts they did have about what happened, and then in some scenes they improvised how they thought the characters would react.)

And of course sometimes even with decent source material, movies based on fact veer off into fiction pretty regularly or just by nature of the casting. They cast this film with a lot of unknowns and lesser-known actors, and some people played themselves-- which I think was a good choice. I mean, they couldn't have had Bruce Willis as Todd Beamer or anything like that, that would be wildly distracting (if any of these actors make it big someday, that will happen with future viewings).

Of course I don't doubt there are some people who will let some parts of the movie stay with them or supersede their experiences or what they know of the facts. But someone would have to be pretty dumb to confuse this movie with a documentary or think that the segment on the plane is acurate. I'm just saying, is all.

Much as I love movies and TV, I also pay close attention to the difference between fact and fiction. Or at least I try my best. I hope I'm not alone!

Re: Movie tickets

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"Much as I love movies and TV, I also pay close attention to the difference between fact and fiction. Or at least I try my best. I hope I'm not alone!"

Of course you're not alone, but you're in a far smaller minority than you think you are.

One random example: Courtrooms all over the country report that juries now expect CSI-life forensics and are suspicious when they don't get them, and don't believe it when judges tell them that it doesn't work that way in real life.

B

Re: Movie tickets

[laurel]

One reason I hole up as much as I do and don't watch or read much news or any "reality" tv is to avoid the stupid people.

Couple that with my tendency to defend everyone and to always give the benefit of the doubt . . . sigh.

I have to believe the smart or at least well-intentioned people outnumber the rest. Or at least I really want to.

(The CSI thing doesn't surprise me).

Of course we can't blame filmmakers and tv showrunners for the fact that some people erroneously believe what they put out there is fact. (Can we? Is there a line somewhere?)

Re: Movie tickets

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Certainly well-intentioned people outnumber the rest, otherwise society would collapse. But smart people...seems not to be the case.

"Of course we can't blame filmmakers and tv showrunners for the fact that some people erroneously believe what they put out there is fact. (Can we? Is there a line somewhere?)"

Blame is a complicated responsible. Certainly there are all sorts of causes, but I can't point to one proximate cause...or one person or group that deserves "blame." There's certainly a lot of blame to go around, but mostly I think it is a natural effect of the social systems we have in place.

B

Blaming film makers

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

What color magical shoes does Dorothy Gale acquire when she goes to OZ?

K.