When the Truth is Too Real

I just finished watching the trailer for the new movie United 93. There is something eerily resonating about it that piques my curiosity just enough to want to go see it. But at the same time, there is something frighteningly harrowing about it, that makes me want to never watch the trailer again. Regardless, the preview has already stirred the waters in New York, and will continue to make headlines when it is released later this year.

Publicity like this can pay off. When you stir the waters and get on the news, lots of people will go see your movie (see: Brokeback Mountain and The Passion of the Christ). But, when documentary meets sorrow, does anyone really win?

I am a fan of the documentary. As someone with a lifelong calling to tell the stories that need telling, I can appreciate it when someone tells the stories via film in order to reach a large amount of the population who is devoid of the truth (usually by choice). Some Hollywood reproductions, like Hotel Rwanda and Schindler’s List should be mandatory viewing. Other real-life (non-actor) documentaries, like Murderball, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Mad Hot Ballroom, Spellbound or Word Wars can be good fun and strike a chord deep within our human spirit.

I watched Good Night, and Good Luck last weekend. I recommend it to anyone because of its prophecy regarding journalism’s role to educate the public at large. The industry has an incredibly large potential to do good, and Mr. Murrow’s words ring true half a century later. In less than 90 minutes, the viewer is taken to the heights and depths of American journalism as it plays out in the lives of real human beings.

The difference between a well made film like Good Night and Good Luck and what looks to be a well made film like United 93 is more than time. Everyone knows that wounds are still fresh from 9/11, even if the film was made with the full cooperation of the families of the victims of the flight that crashed in a Pennsylvania field. In the director’s letter from the movie’s website, Mr. Greengrass discusses how the passengers on that plane were the first inhabitants of our post-9/11 world, having learned about the other 3 planes hitting their targets.

While such a statement is interesting to consider, it still must remain only speculation. This is why the film, despite its bad-car-wreck-on-the-interstate, make-you-want-to-slow-down-and-stare feeling makes me get lost in pure wonder. I wonder what went through the heads of those who stormed the cockpit. I wonder about the gut wrenching nausea of those on the ground receiving final phone calls. I wonder about the dialogue between air traffic controllers, military brass and airline personnel that happened in an unimaginable and indescribable moment of fear and crisis.

And I wonder what I would have done. Air travel still makes me a little nervous. And when I die, I want it to be with a purpose, preferably in place of someone else. So, as I stare at the computer screen, I can’t help but get the feeling I’m looking in a mirror.

Already, some have wondered if it’s too soon to make a movie about 9/11. The documentaries done by networks every September are enough as it is. Can a feature-length film, (Oliver Stone is also making one) accurately capture, only 5 years later, the delicate combination of fear and heroism that came together en route from Newark to San Francisco? Could a film do so 10, 25, or 50 years later?

No films were made about Rwanda until nearly 10 years later. Now, another one has been made. The hope from one filmmaker is, "One day I hope Rwandans will make this film." Regardless of your feelings about 9/11, history will be the judge. There is certainly some futility in attempting to name a school of philosophy as it unfolds (my one beef with postmodernism). Naming is left to a generation after the fact. But does this mean that my children should make the films about 9/11 like the children of those during the Red Scare made Good Night and Good Luck and the children of Johnny Cash made Walk the Line?

We can’t answer this. But time can, and will, because my children will make 9/11 movies. And this is the beauty of it all: multiple voices, attempting to capture on the silver screen the heroic actions of brave souls who felt there was only one course of action.