If you read my post on the "World Trade Center" movie, you may recall the reference to the "9/11" documentary filmed by French brothers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet. Well, it aired again Sunday night on CBS, and again, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the screen.
Only this time, the documentary had the added benefit of an update at the end, touching base with many of the firefighters filmed to see how they and their lives had changed, five years later. The rookie the brothers had originally set out to profile when they began filming at the fire station months earlier had left the "house" to join the terrorism haz-mat (hazardous materials) team. The chief, whose firefighting brother had died in the south tower, is now the head of the operations center, having been promoted a couple times since. Naturally, some of the men had retired. A few had gone so far as to move away from New York City altogether. Survivor's guilt seemed to have plagued many, and as was just hinted at, some may eventually be plagued with a respiratory illness I bet will come to be nicknamed "WTC disease" or some similar 9/11-related moniker . But their stories, their memories resonate just as powerfully. I was still riveted.
I think what struck me most was hearing the French brothers themselves talk about how that day had changed them. Somewhere toward the end of the original footage, you see the members of the company straggling back in to the station, most covered in that chalky ash, cursing in frustration and confusion, then embracing one another. They are silently keeping tally of who has made it back safe and who is still unaccounted for. The Frenchmen were separated too, each with a camera, recording the horror, and each thought the other was dead. Reunited at the station, they too, embrace. Miraculously, every one of the 50 men of that crew survived, though they all lost friends or relatives who had either worked in or near the towers or served in another fire company. And then one of the Frenchmen appears (Jules, I think?) telling how close he now is with his brother. A clip of Gedeon's wedding plays; life has begun moving on for him, too. But even in the wedding footage, you can see the connection; both brothers seem much softer (and not just because one of them is wearing one of those ruffled-lapel powder blue 70's-era suits. Goodness, I hope he liked it because it was "vintage.") You can tell how grateful they are for the gift of one another.
Another indelible: the firm resolution in the firefighter's eyes, their turn of speech, the way you can tell they have chosen, irrevocably, to look back on it with a very specific perspective, or describe it with an unchanging phrase. If the Naudets update this film again in another five years, I know these men will not lose those phrases, that look in their eyes.
It's much like the simple resolution I made rushing out to report on what became the first of many assignments covering what seemed like every possible local angle of the aftermath of that day. Sometime then or in the first few days after, I just made a decision: I'm always going to call it, write it as the Sept. 11 terrorist "attacks." Yes, it was tragic, but "tragedy" wouldn't make the cut. Nor would "calamity" or even "catastrophe." No, it was always going to be "attacks."
I've never been to New York City. I never knew what it was before and what it is now, except for what I've seen in pictures, or moving pictures. Robert DeNiro was standing in front of a beautiful golden panorama, one of the memorials that has been built, to narrate parts of the new clips, the updates woven in at the end of the film. I think that I would love to touch that memorial, read it, soak it in. But if I never get there, that's ok.
I have my own memorial, that one simple word. And I resolve to keep it.
That's how I choose to remember.
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