Traumatic "WTC"?
Screenings of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center (Paramount, 8.9) are happening soon for NYC policemen and firefighters who risked their lives on 9/11. I was kind of scratching my head, though, when I read this USA Today quote from a spokesperson for "the union representing Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police officers," warning that "ground-zero rescue workers [should] be aware that watching [World Trade Center] could cause post-traumatic stress disorder."
I guess any film that takes 9/11 veterans back to that day is going to be upsetting. The first 20 or 25 minutes' of World Trade Center that I saw in Cannes felt solid, realistic and urgent, but I haven't gotten the idea that it rocks audiences in the same way that United 93 did. (A fair portion of it happens inside a dark hole.) But maybe not. A NYC friend who's seen it says that "for some of these guys who were on duty that day, maybe. The magnitude of it is different than that of United 93. A lot of it take place at night...that's when they were finally dug out. And that makes it kind of eerie. And there's the claustrophobia factor, and above ground a lot guys running around, what's going on here...a lot of confusion. I could see it being a fairly unsettling thing for anyone who was down there that day."
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on July 17, 2006 at 11:29 AM
comment #1
Chris Molanphy says ...
Is it really so hard to guess why 'WTC' would be more traumatic for this particular audience than 'United 93' was? The trailer alone tells you it's going to depict the gut-wrenching decision the officers had to make to plunge into the unknown and climb up the towers – a job so, so much bigger than anything any of them had been trained for. Reliving that particular experience and its attendant emotions would be hard for any New Yorker, devastating for the FDNY and PDNY.
I'm sure 'United 93' was no walk in the park for these guys, either, but 'WTC' is essentially about *them*.
Posted by Chris Molanphy at July 17, 2006 1:09 PM
comment #2
Chris says ...
Post traumatic stress disorder is, broadly speaking, the inability to forget fine details of a traumatic incident. Basically, the same neurochemicals that get the adrenalin going in a crisis also serve to sear a memory into one's conciousnous. So it's not hard to believe at all that the depictions of 9-11 would trigger PTSD among the first responders who witnessed the horror of that day. As good as the film may be, someone who was down in lower Manhattan on 9-11 should probably completely avoid the film.
Posted by Chris at July 17, 2006 4:15 PM
comment #3
jeffmcm says ...
Seems pretty obvious.
Posted by jeffmcm at July 17, 2006 7:38 PM
comment #4
Ronnie Rabbit says ...
Doesn't it 'seem pretty obvious' that men who were at ground zero in what's probably this country's most horrible disaster can handle /a frickin movie/? The people in the union who put this out there are idiots, and I hope droves of the men being condescended to by this little speech lambaste them appropriately.
I still don't understand when, exactly, representations of reality became somehow worse than reality. Ye gods.
Posted by Ronnie Rabbit at July 19, 2006 4:15 PM