I find myself changing the channel when commercials for United 93 come on. It’s an odd thing for me, but I’ve done it enough times now that I’ve been thinking about it. I’m not a survivor of the WTC and I personally was not close to anyone that died in the attacks. I was just a guy living in Boston. Even with that personal distance from the tragedy, I’m not ready for this movie.

When I was a kid, we had a school assignment where we had to go home and ask our parents, “Where were you when you heard Kennedy was shot?” Even my parents, who were both in India at the time, remembered where they heard about it. Other parents remembered very clear details about the moment they heard. As a child, I was amazed that people could remember stuff like that. On 9/11, I finally realized how people could remember the details of those moments.

I remember taking a cab to work, listening to the voices of the morning show hosts when the second plane made it obvious that it was a terrorist attack. Knowing my sister was supposed to be on a plane to Paris that morning. Being thankful that my other sister was “safe” in Beijing (which, until that morning, seemed like a scarier place than NYC). Being angry. Being scared. Sitting at the computer while part of my brain just stared at photographs of the towers smoking, then falling… while the other part of my brain “planned” along with the engineers at CNN.com, ABCNews.com, and MSNBC.com about how they were going to keep their servers running with so much traffic coming at them. Being a bit jealous that at least they had a purpose on that day. All I was doing was bearing witness.

It’s the reality of these memories that makes me avoid this movie. These are real memories. I don’t want them to become legend, yet. Those people in the movie are real people. I don’t want them to become larger than life, yet. All of the victims on that flight are important. Which of them will be our screen heros? I’m just not ready to deal with that, yet. The film will have to speculate on a large number of details, from how the flight attendants greeted the passengers to what the passengers said to each other when they planned their final assault. I’m not ready for fiction to enter into this story, yet. Most of all, I’m not ready to relive the fear and the emotion of that day on a large screen.

I confess that part of this is fear. This is unlike watching a documentary on the History channel, where dry analysis combines with occasional footage of the events. I’m afraid that immersing myself in the events and emotions of that day will be too much. It’s too close, still, even though I lost no one that day.

Certainly, some 9/11 families will gain some comfort from this film. Others may avoid it. Other Americans may or may not want to see it. All of us grieve differently. For that reason alone, it’s OK that this film got made now. It will be good for some people to see this. Just not for me. Yet.

Afterthoughts

Slate ran a debate their editors had over the film. It’s worth reading.

You can watch the trailer for yourself. It hit me pretty hard, to be honest (I did finally watch it before writing this).

The final moments of the flight in the cockpit were captured by the flight recorder. The transcript was released by the judge in the Moussaoui trial. You can read it yourself, if you haven’t already.