Even with the armor that 10 years’ distance provides, there is no way to prepare emotionally for a confrontation with the facts of the 9/11 terror attack. That confrontation is the unavoidable result of the anniversary observance, and its most essential one. It is, one could say, the heart of the matter. There will be many speeches on the anniversary, plenty of tributes to the meaning of the day, and plentiful testimony about the universal lessons to be drawn from this occasion.
And yet no testimony could be as fitting as the hard facts of that September day a decade ago””the one, a Smithsonian documentary declares, that changed the world. Of the numerous television films produced in commemoration of this 9/11 anniversary, the Smithsonian Channel’s stands out for the clarity and strength of its narrative (delivered by Martin Sheen), and its focus. A heart-shattering focus, often enough as it takes in the pictures so well remembered, but so expertly deployed that those images seem here more immediate, the stories they tell more abundant. Here again are the scenes of people escaping the inferno of the World Trade Center just in time””crowds of dazed men and women dragging strangers alongside them into the safety of the street.