United.

I saw United 93 this evening. There's nothing I can say that hasn't already been said by New York magazine or Rolling Stone or the countless newspaper reviews of this movie, so I'll just have to tell you what I felt.

Last year for Western Civ 2 we had to read a Holocaust narrative, All But My Life by Gerda Klein, as our final book of the course. Crimes against humanity have been a particular interest for me over the years stemming from my passion for WWII history, but I had never read anything that dealt with the Holocaust on a personal level. Reading All But My Life, I had to put it down every few pages and get up and walk around because of the sheer dispair that I was experiencing. That I knew what was going to happen, and that it was sixty years and a lifetime ago did not help me become a dispassionate, objective reader; if anything it did the opposite. I knew these people were going to die, and that I was powerless to stop it.

So it was with the film tonight. The underlying message for all of the administrators and air traffic controllers was clear enough: what the fuck do we pay you for? But if the movie has a political tone, that is it. The rest of the film is as magnificient as it is excruciating; the climactic twenty minutes, showing the final phone calls, the last prayers to God (on both sides), and the struggle to take back a plane spinning from the heavens down to its fated resting place, could well be the most unforgettable twenty minutes ever filmed. Though I could feel tears streaming down my cheeks, I was as powerless to stop them as I was to stop that plane.

Is it too soon for a movie about 11 September? Of course it is. For those of us who experienced that day, who tuned in the horror of an act of war before our very eyes, who listened to commentators trying not to blow their shit, who gave blood or who simply stood outside that next morning to listen to the silence of the skies, it will always be too soon. This is why we have art, and why we must hope to God that those who make that art have the understanding, empathy and decency to help us realize that while we may be powerless, it is just for a moment in time. Indeed, we have only that moment to spare.