In Memoriam: New York City

When I first heard about this HBO documentary, I vowed to never watch it. It simply sounded very exploitive and tacky. However, it was anything but. In fact I think this doc was better than the one done by CBS earlier this year. The HBO one chose to portray the events through mainly music and imagery. There was no narration, unlike the CBS one. Mayor Guiliani provided commentary and the standard interviews were done with survivors, victim's families, etc, and also a lot of taped footage of bystanders' reactions. It was beautifully done. The music was so perfect and so perfectly timed it really added the right emotional depth. This documentary wasn't exploitive at all. Yes, they showed images and photos of people jumping to their deaths from the burning WTC towers and of a jumper's body on the ground, but their lack of sugarcoating any of the events was a good decision. I felt they had to show everything as it happened. They were careful to erase any details that might give away the jumpers' identities. This was a very tragic and very historic event, and you can't sugarcoat history. It is no different than showing all the images from Pearl Harbor. I would recommend this to anyone interested and give it a 10/10.