Review - Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero

Technically this is an episode of Frontline, but it’s movie-length and certainly worthy of the title “documentary,” so I’m gonna go ahead and review it. Parts of this piece were fascinating, particularly the Sept. 11 footage that many other news outlets have shied away from showing (such as people jumping out of the upper floors of the World Trade Center). Some of the interviews also made for interesting viewing. If nothing else, the film-makers did a solid job of capturing a range of reactions to the tragedy. However, some of the discourse was more than a little weak. I was particularly disappointed by the section on the nature of evil. I thought surely some of the people who had stared such experiences directly in the face would have put at least some thought into the subject, perhaps finding a way to go beyond George Bush’s “Legion of Doom versus the Superfriends” approach to the question. Sadly, most of the subjects came up lacking. But overall this was an interesting if not always enlightening exploration of the interaction between tragedy and religious belief. Mildly amusing