Gerster’s blog

Never is too soon.

April 30th, 2006

Tonight I saw that mediocre Michael Douglas / Kiefer Sutherland thriller with my sister. I don’t even remember what it was called. All I know is that I didn’t see United 93.

Yes, it’s garnered critical acclaim; yes, I’m sure it’s a moving tribute to the passengers who saved our capital city; yes, it’s been almost five years, etc. I don’t care. This blogger nailed it when he said: “I won’t see it. Saw this yesterday on Google Video and realized it was enough.” “This” being amateur video of the collapse of the South Tower (the second one hit, the first to collapse).

I don’t suggest watching it, but if you do, observe the reaction of the crowd. They are watching the smoking towers, probably wondering about the rescue effort–the camera zooms in on a circling helicopter a couple of times–and then the South Tower collapses.

I learned of the attack when my mother called around 8AM Pacific time. The first thing she said was “the World Trade Center has been destroyed”, so I never experienced the shock of the collapse. But watching this video, you realize that even after the planes hit, no one thought the buildings would fall.

Four and a half years later, we’ve forgotten this feeling of seismic incomprehensibility. The President glibly invokes “the events of September the eleventh” as irrelevant justification for a disastrous war. Conspiracy buffs theorize that the CIA placed explosive charges in the twin towers (apparently a much less frightening idea than the truth). And of course, there’s this movie.

But 9/11 isn’t a political football, or a paranoid puzzle, or a cinematic triumph; it is the primitive horror of watching the first tower collapse. And our attempts to wring meaning out of it, to regain a sense of normalcy and control, will always fail.

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