Reflections on "War of the Worlds"

Last night after three false starts I finally got to see, "War of the Worlds." Before I left I received a warning phone call from a friend saying that it was very blah. "Walk, don't run, to see this movie," is how he put it. The buzz going around was that it looked great but the plot was almost non-existent. It's mostly Cruise and Fanning running from the robots and one scene featuring a very eerie Tim Robbins.

When the movie was over I was visibly shaken up. Upon reflection what I realized was that I'm not nearly as over 9/11 as I thought I was. I was on the pier in Brooklyn with first tower went down and that image (and the screams around me) are still pretty fresh in my head. Watching the machines tear apart my former home (I live in Miami now) made me a bit sick to my stomach. Trauma works in mysterious ways. Just when you think you've worked through something, a fictional story about robots and aliens destroying the earth triggers memories and feelings from that horrible day.

But that's not the real problem I had with the movie as such. I was fighting back tears during the scene where Cruise and family are attacked in the van by a mob of people. Man's inhumanity to man and all that I suppose. I just felt awful watching a depiction of people devolving into animals and seeing a defenseless girl nearly get mauled by grown adults. From a cinematic or artistic point of view it was fine but I personally found it very hard to watch and I had difficulty separating myself from the fiction. I guess that particular moment in the film was a little too real for me and I I was already a little worn down from the first sequence of destruction.

As a social worker/therapist it pains me to see children of any stripe being abused. However, usually when I see a movie I can detach from reality long enough to enjoy the film. In this case I'm not sure whether or not I liked as I'm still trying to work through being quasi-retraumatized. I can say for sure that this is the first time I can recall getting sick to my stomach because of the fictional images on a screen (and not because of movie popcorn).

This is not a rip on Spielberg or the art of making movies where stuff blows up. I'm fine with that. The end of "Batman Begins" didn't make me sick to my stomach nor did any of "Revenge of the Sith" (except for the love scene dialogue between Padme and Anakin but that's a topic for a different column). As despressing as "Cinderella Man" was at times, I left the theater feeling pretty good about what I saw. "War of the Worlds" wasn't exploitive or insulting or any of that. It was a fictional story for the purposes of entertaining a summer moviegoing audience and nothing more. That's groovy and I can dig it. The problem isn't with Spielberg. The problem is me. As I stated above, trauma is a complex thing and you never know what will trigger you and what won't. All I could think about during the initial sequence with the robots destroying NY was 9/11 despite the fact that the two events were nothing alike and do not wish to make it seem like they are congruent in any way. They clearly are not and it sucks that even so, I can't seem to separate the two in my mind and soul.

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