"Path of 9/11": Finally, Painfully, The Stuff We All Know Is True

For all the controversy over ABC's "Path To 9/11" — and I've complained a lot — I'm now at the part that we all know is horribly, unthinkably too true and it's as terrible to watch as it ever was, maybe more because you know what's coming every step of the way and then some, and as horrible as it is to see those planes go in it's not even close to how truly horrendous it's gonna get, down at the tip of Manhattan and in two other cities besides. It's all there - the fluttering papers; the sudden fireball as the second plane slices into Tower Two; the horrified upturned faces; the crumbling towers slipping down into clouds of dust, leaving behind nothing but open space, suddenly, incongruously, incredibly. I don't believe in this film or its fickle treatment of the historical record, but this part is the part that gets you because we know it's all too goddamned true. And ironically, after all of the partisan bickering over the movie, this is the part that we all watch in the exact same way: With horror, with sadness, with pain and fear and disbelief tempered by searing memory, with regret and with remembrance. All too real, all too true. So, filmmakers, I will give you that.