United 93 (not a review)
Apr. 28th, 2006 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmI am glad that United 93 is as well-made as it is. If it weren't the discourse about it would be even more complicated than it aleady is, and I'm similarly glad the Times review (http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/04/28/movies/28unit.html) seems as baffled as it is.
I haven't seen it yet, and I suppose I will because it is something I want to be able to write about in an informed manner, although I am torn about when and how. I don't, as you probably know, have a large amount of scruples about what is and isn't appropriate. I am, after all, the woman who had over a dozen people (almost entirely unconnected with NYC/DC/PA) unfriend her during 9/11 events because I blurted out in my journal that I was glad it wasn't the Chrysler Building. (It's a trivial thing I'm still irritable about because it annoys me when people are possessive in grief or refuse to understand strange solace.)
All of this said, I find the idea of United 93, not so much inappropriate, but irksome. Oliver Stone, who also has a movie coming out about 9/11 will at least regales us with conspiracy theories. Adam Sandler's 9/11 movie is reportedly a dramedy about dealing with the aftermath. Both projects share the notable trait of putting fiction onto fact. United 93, which granted is brought to us by the guy who gave us Bloody Sunday (which is quite effective), largely isn't. It's an exceptionally produced bit of reconstruction like you'd see on the History Channel or something, just better. Various government officials play themselves in it!
More galling, perhaps, than the thing's existence (again, I'm not on about propriety here, and this should become clear in a moment) is that it's opening the Tribeca Film Festival, which, of course, was started to revitalize the downtown economy after 9/11. Opening with this movie (as opposed to showing it in special session with a panel or something, which would have been appropriate), strikes me like that SNL skit soon after 9/11 -- it was mocking some awards show where people were tryig to dress soberly because of 9/11, and one fellow, dressed as some famous actor or other shows up in a suit covered in shit. When asked by "Joan Rivers" what's up with that, he says, "I didn't think we all felt bad enough, so I sat under a horse."
New York will never stop being heartbroken, but heartbreak is about life, not death. And if you're going to open our film festival with this, going to put this on our screens, going to make us watch those ridiculous testimonial ads about this film, we deserve better, not in craft or skill, that's evidently present in large amount. But in art. An event that moved us from one era into another, that negated the fearful imaginings of our nuclear childhoods as not imaginative enough, deserves to have art, not just artfulness. Courage here isn't cementing the apocrypha of the events of that day, but creating it, and recreating it, and calling it story. I don't feel outraged in all of this, merely poorly done by.
I haven't seen it yet, and I suppose I will because it is something I want to be able to write about in an informed manner, although I am torn about when and how. I don't, as you probably know, have a large amount of scruples about what is and isn't appropriate. I am, after all, the woman who had over a dozen people (almost entirely unconnected with NYC/DC/PA) unfriend her during 9/11 events because I blurted out in my journal that I was glad it wasn't the Chrysler Building. (It's a trivial thing I'm still irritable about because it annoys me when people are possessive in grief or refuse to understand strange solace.)
All of this said, I find the idea of United 93, not so much inappropriate, but irksome. Oliver Stone, who also has a movie coming out about 9/11 will at least regales us with conspiracy theories. Adam Sandler's 9/11 movie is reportedly a dramedy about dealing with the aftermath. Both projects share the notable trait of putting fiction onto fact. United 93, which granted is brought to us by the guy who gave us Bloody Sunday (which is quite effective), largely isn't. It's an exceptionally produced bit of reconstruction like you'd see on the History Channel or something, just better. Various government officials play themselves in it!
More galling, perhaps, than the thing's existence (again, I'm not on about propriety here, and this should become clear in a moment) is that it's opening the Tribeca Film Festival, which, of course, was started to revitalize the downtown economy after 9/11. Opening with this movie (as opposed to showing it in special session with a panel or something, which would have been appropriate), strikes me like that SNL skit soon after 9/11 -- it was mocking some awards show where people were tryig to dress soberly because of 9/11, and one fellow, dressed as some famous actor or other shows up in a suit covered in shit. When asked by "Joan Rivers" what's up with that, he says, "I didn't think we all felt bad enough, so I sat under a horse."
New York will never stop being heartbroken, but heartbreak is about life, not death. And if you're going to open our film festival with this, going to put this on our screens, going to make us watch those ridiculous testimonial ads about this film, we deserve better, not in craft or skill, that's evidently present in large amount. But in art. An event that moved us from one era into another, that negated the fearful imaginings of our nuclear childhoods as not imaginative enough, deserves to have art, not just artfulness. Courage here isn't cementing the apocrypha of the events of that day, but creating it, and recreating it, and calling it story. I don't feel outraged in all of this, merely poorly done by.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 09:34 pm (UTC)Many of your thoughts on the subject of this movie resonate with mine. I'm not angry or offended that it was made, or done somewhat narrowly, but I can't bear the thought of watching it. The commercials make me viscerally upset, in my gut. It's been several years and I'm surprised to admit the event still pains me greatly. My sister and I gew up in NYC (Queens) and we both felt the loss so keenly even though everyone we know (including friends who worked in the WTC, lived around the corner, and were expected to exit that subway station) somehow managed to be at the right place and right time. Both of us lives many miles away from our old place in Queens, so we often found ourselves oddly isolated in our grief.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 02:23 pm (UTC)I started trying to write more than that, but it was just a jumbled mess. But really, thank you for your thoughts.