I felt it was my duty...
Me and jay-Lady and the red-headed (non-step)child went to see United 93 Friday night. It was the quietist audience I have ever heard, even compared to when I went to see The Passion of the Christ. Go see it. It will hurt, but all of us owe those folk- they were American in their heroism in a way not often seen. Go see it, you owe them that much.
UPDATE: Varifrank chimes in-
One day I came back from the beach and came into the house, I slammed the screen door behind me. My grandfather was asleep on the sofa in "mid afternoon nap", but when the bang of the screen door reverberated through the house he leapt up off the sofa exactly the way that 70 year old men don’t and electrified cats often do.
I will never forget the look of stark terror that was on his face, and although he was looking right at me, it was as if I wasn’t there. In just one moment he had gone from snoring and sleeping away the afternoon on the sofa to standing in a cold sweat, looking confused and terrified.
That metallic sound of the screen door as it slapped the inside of the doorframe had just the right timbre, just the right pitch to send a nightmare loose in the mind of my sleeping grandfather. In one moment it was 1968 and he was sleeping on the sofa. The next, he was years in the past on the little “tin can” of the USS Fletcher, on watch below decks as she was being shelled by the battleships of Imperial Japanese Navy as they steamed through “the slot”. Of course at the time I knew none of this history and the minor role he played in it, all I knew is that I was probably going to catch hell for waking my grandfather in the middle of his afternoon nap.
“You have to be careful honey, that screen door does something horrible to your grandfather. So promise me you’ll be more careful with it, ok?” My grandmother said into my ear in a quiet whisper as she leaned down to guide me out of the room. My grandfather tried to compose himself as he sat there, his head in his hands and somewhat embarrassed to have been caught so emotionally exposed. I nodded a slight "yes" to her in return all the while wondering when the punishment for my innocent act would come. But there was to be no punishment. It was a simple accident and she knew it. It was one that she herself had caused several times over the years. She had witnessed his struggle with the past. She recognized their sound but never knew the cause for the sudden involuntary screams in the night of a man who had survived what so many others had not. It wasnt just the stress of the event, but the guilt that comes from survival that had left a mark on his soul.
Review here, via Varifrank. And please, read the entire post of his linked above. Pretty much says it all.