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

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.