United 93

There's a movie coming out later this week called "United 93," about the one airplane that didn't hit the target that terrorists had planned for it on 9/11/2001. Lots of comments will come out about whether the film should have been made or not.
I won't go there. I can't.
I saw the film at a critics screening with my husband.
It brought back lots of memories. On 9/11/01 I was into my first week at a new job, situated about 3 blocks from the White House. As surreal as the day became for me on 9/11, that's how unreal the film felt to me. It's still unbelievable that the Twin Towers that were part of the landscape of my childhood are no more. It's still unbelievable that people would want to smack jumbo jets, full of people, into buildings, killing themselves in the process. The bravery of the passengers onboard United 93 was understated by Hollywood standards. They did what they needed to do to make sure that they weren't anemic victims. They went after the hijackers because they had nothing to loose. They knew their lives would end just as surely as the hijackers did.

In a Hollywood story there would be something more to the people. There would be leaders that you could spot, undeniably, onboard the plane. But, the guys who made this movie didn't over do it. I thought they did it the way it must have been done--quickly, without the grandiose speeches of a Hollywood script.

I left the film remembering the mind numbing, depression or funk, that I fell into after 9/11...When the building where I worked in DC was evacuated, dealing with what turned out to be false reports of the Metro Train system being shutdown, having to rely on the goodness of total strangers, giving me what turned out to be a four hour drive home.

The film does remind me that the country has come a long way. We may be able to handle mass evacuations better than we did nearly five years ago. We may be able to draw upon the hidden bravery of regular men and women who won't allow themselves to be taken hostage, ever again, onboard jumbo jets. We may be able to tell the world that the unthinkable is inevitable and they we will be alright. We're Americans. We know what we need to do. We'll "roll" when we need to.

RR