Still “Too Soon”?
Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale has spoken to a guy who’s allegedly seen Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and one of his reactions, Van Airsdale writes, is that “the film’s current introduction — which features falling bodies, crushing thuds, and other vividly horrifying reminders of the initial scene at the World Trade Center — was less emotionally affecting than just inappropriate” and “too soon.”
Ten years later is too soon? I got fairly angry with people who were saying this five years ago when United 93 was about to open, but anyone who says this now is taking the post-traumatic thing into obsession. “Too soon!” is the mantra of people who aren’t breathing in and out, who are basically coming from a place of emotional denial or suppression. I have eight words for Van Airsdale’s guy: It happened, life moves on, get over it.
Put another way, if you shudder and moan for too long in response to a given traumatic event, if you refuse to heal and accept the natural shedding of skin, there comes a point when people start regarding you as a grief monkey.
To play devil’s advocate — he’s citing test screening reactions (plural, from multiple viewers) from New Yorkers who saw the film. You can’t be surprised that they might react differently than you…
It isn’t so much a “too soon” as in they can’t handle it, it’s just what’s the point in watching something so recent, well known, and accessible in the form of entertainment? I don’t mind the fact the movie uses 9/11 as a starting point for the son, but what purpose does it serve to show bodies falling and hearing the thuds? Just seems tactless.
Oh, and related to this very thread — everyone get off your butts and read “The Submission” by Amy Waldman. Great new novel that speaks exactly to this topic.
Arguably, it’s taken too long. I can’t speak to the specifics as presented in this film, but Tom Junod made a persuasive case in this Esquire article (http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0903-SEP_FALLINGMAN) that we have been too quick to banish from our eyes the reality of what happened that day.
Who is “we?” Did “we” banish the images, or did the media gatekeepers?
And to what end?
Banished? If anything it’s paraded around so much every year, I don’t care if I ever see it again. It’s manipulative now the way they do it. The whole weekend coverage of the 10th anniversary had me cringing at the maudlin reception, and repetitive images.
I don’t even get to whether its opportunistic or craven or calculated to feature (or strongly imply) the carnage… the film itself looks Extremely Mannered and Incredibly Cloying.
Certain images have through repetition come to signal the event, but the article suggests there are specific things we don’t want to look at/consider, and one of those things was the people who jumped or fell.
It’s “too soon” for another Stephen Daldry movie. But then again, it always is.
I am so sick of this “too soon” bullshit. Would the cinematic world be a better place if United 93 had never been made, or came out 15-20 years later? Part of what made it so powerful was how visceral AND recent to the horrible events of 9/11 it was. It hurt, and it damn well should have.
“Too soon” is for pussies.
Wells to sumo-pop: Right.
“Grief monkeys”…is this a new one? Add it to the list!
Too soon? Don’t these people remember “Reign Over Me?”
I’m gonna sue……..
It’s too soon to use the footage for laughs.
“Would the cinematic world be a better place if United 93 had never been made?”
Trick question, right?
Would party monkeys be worse than grief elephants?
What bluetide said. And UNITED 93 is a masterpiece. I don’t think it’s an issue of “too soon” but I do think that the murder of over 2000 people should be used as more than coming-of-age story window dressing. (And Glenn Kenney, not only REIGN O’ER ME, but have we forgotten the Robert Pattinson-starring REMEMBER ME? Wasn’t that film also accused of using 9/11 as a cinematic bookend to a standard emo romance?)
“Too soon? Don’t these people remember “Reign Over Me?” ”
I can’t tell. Is this a droll shot of humor?
“Too soon? Don’t these people remember “Reign Over Me?”
unfortunately, all too well…
I was living in Brooklyn on 9/11, and I believe that any asshole who still thinks it’s too soon needs to pull their heads out of their asses, get themselves in to therapy and get the fuck over it already. Especially considering the book this movie is based on came out six years ago.
Grief monkeys exist because there is still money to be made out of extending their situation. The mileage comes from the parades of flags and posters and memorial button badges and commemorative t-shirts and, yes music and plays and books and movies… and those dollars add up. So, while people are perfectly entitled to peddle a dollar and those who say it is too soon are addicted to that grief, are those who write and sing about it and try to make art from it… are they not sucking on the grief tit? I mean, has anyone ever been to Lourdes? It’s like the red light district in Amsterdam.
Grief monkeys is a brilliant term, but I would call them grief whores.
It’s not “too soon” as much as “you had better have a damn good reason for making me relieve the horror of that day”. If it’s a masterpiece (United 93?), well, OK then, I see the point (though millions of other regular movie-going citizens did not). The jury is still out on this film, for me and for just about everyone else. I’m at least willing to be convinced, but given that I was not interested in continuing to read “Everything Is Illuminated” after about 4 chapters, it’s going to take a lot. Something on the order of several friends telling me it’s the best movie they’ve seen all year.
The Best Years of Our Lives came out one year after World War II ended. It didn’t need graphic reminders of the horrors the country had just endured to make its point. Harold Russell’s performance did that on it’s own. Sometimes I think modern movies suffer from a failure of imagination.
It’s more than a failure of imagination. Modern movies are greenlit and sometimes made by non-creative types who’ve got money or connections but little or no intellectual or artistic sensibilities. They don’t know from metaphor or allegory or subtlety, don’t believe in such pussy-assed college boy stuff because they have no experience with it.
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