United 93

I watched United 93 tonight. Mike was right. Its an emotional rollarcoaster. It truly is a storytelling character piece. I noticed in the credits that a few of the characters were played by themselves. Commanders in NORAD and such. I also knew that the casting director purposely choose actors that might not be as well known or recognizable. The purpose was to make the people look like ordinary people, which is who they really are. They look like people you see on the airplane everyday. They aren’t your best friends and you really don’t know much about them other than they are traveling from point A to point B.

What really struck me was how they recreated the chaos of the control towers. They just had no idea what was going on or where these planes were. I never completely understood how that could happen although I didn’t disbelieve any of it. This movie really made me understand how the control rooms and NORAD could be so clueless, and in such a hard position. I remember reading in the 9/11 Commission Report that NORAD’s C.O. spent a long time on the phone trying to get the rules of engagement from the correct authority. And that is constant through the NORAD scenes. It didn’t seem that he wanted to shoot down the planes or kill anymore, but he did want to know what he could and could not do. I felt like he got to a point where he didn’t know what he wanted as rules of engagement. He wanted to know what he could or could not do. For him, there was no time to engage in thinking of scenarios and fight squences that he wouldn’t be allowed to do.

It was tough to watch and I think if you do watch it, you need to be prepared for it. It doesn’t gloss over anything. It shows the second plane hitting the tower as if you were watching from the control tower across the water. Even though I knew it was coming and I knew what it looked like, the scene still struck a chord deep within me. I had tears streaming down my face from that moment on for just about the rest of the movie.

It was a tough movie to watch, but I felt like its important and theraputic and good. I don’t want America to forget what happened. I don’t want to forget what happened. I don’t want to forget the pain and how much it hurt. I don’t want to become numb to tragedy. I don’t need to remember every pain every day. But I don’t want to forget. This movie helps me to remember.