WTC

I was @ my office this afternoon trying to commit some particularly painful episode of mentacide for whatever reason. (i.e. "even my mom hates me, I'm way too fat to be happy, no one should ever date me because I'm awful looking", etc) It probably stemmed from a series of minor, uncomfortable happenings in the recent weeks that I've been otherwise able to ignore due to distraction by the wedding for one, and distraction by the boy for another. Problem is, as everyone said the problem would be, someone finding you wonderful despite your flaws, doesn't make your flaws any less apparent to you.

So anyway, they catch up with you. The flaws and uncomfortable happenings and bad moods seem to always catch up with you all on the same day, all at once. You will be in the middle of a particularly mindless office task, while listening to your ipod trying desperately to think about your plans for the evening instead of the nasty old woman in accounting who has just sent you her 15th email of the day when everything catches up with you. And all at once, everything makes you sad. It was that feeling, that exact kind of mood that struck me, when I decided to blow off working late, blow off going to the gym, get out of my own head for a little while, and go see a movie. A movie, it seemed, would be good for me tonight.

(Note to self: try not to see World Trade Center when you're already in the throws of unexplained, gripping sadness, unless you're looking for some serious life-perspective.)

I'll make this brief, unlike the time I saw "The Passion of the Christ" and this Catholic-baptized-Methodist-raised-turned-Atheist decided to write her thesis on the experience. (Thank God my advisor talked me down to a pre-thesis research paper a semester earlier, since only two weeks into my research I began having recurring nightmares about hypovolemic shock and choking on blood.) ANYWAY... my short review is that it was good. I'd recommend it if two things are true.

1st-- you go alone. I cried, off and on, and it didn't have anything in particular to do with stellar acting, or a heart-wrenchingly sad scene. On occassion, it was quite the opposite. Sometimes it seemed an unusual time to be crying. They were alive, they were saved, they were reunited, etc. (You know the story, I'm not ruining anything for anyone.) But it's one of those things... you just need to work through to figure out how you feel about it. Cry when you need to, when it hits you because it just does. No concern over the wet cheeks and runny nose stuff. You don't need your boyfriend sighing and rolling his eyes at you. "I get it, they love their wives, whatEVER," etc. (There was one such annoyed boyfriend in my theater, and I have to admit, even I had a moment of 'let's get on with this...' but it was brief, and sympathetic to the fact that we're still dealing with Hollywood, afterall.)

2nd-- you don't expect anything from it. I don't like Nicolas Cage, and I thought the casting was crappy. (His "New York" accent sounded a little more retarded, a little less Goshen.) But I'll give it a very enthusiastic two thumbs up for not overdoing it in general. There weren't graphic depictions of death and dying, (only one person falling from the tower, at which point one man in our audience did get up and walk out. I, myself, became a little queasy at the sight of it.) Oliver didn't Hollywood-it-up to the point of absurdity, and in fact, quite the contrary. They glossed over almost everything except the actual discussions between John and Will for the nearly 24 hours that they're trapped, and the reactions of their wives to the unfolding news of their husbands' disappearance into the rubble.

It was good. And it served to put me in my place, which I needed today. Nothing, absolutely NOTHING in my life will ever compare in any way, barring, God forbid, surviving something similar, which I can't begin to imagine. I field the "aren't you scared of New York?" question pretty frequently from people who don't live here. The answer, even after the movie, is always "absolutely not." But it does humble you. It does bring you to a real sense of our mortality. Here, and anywhere. And it does, certainly, break the heart. It's a devastating, and well done film. I was not at all disappointed. And in fact, it made me better. For which I can say, I am sadly grateful.