In its first weekend, The Siegepremiered with box office receipts second only toAdam Sandler's The Waterboy. In its second,the film had dropped to fourth. Industry reviewshave been mixed, while many in the Muslim and Arabcommunity remain disappointed and vociferouslycritical. "I don't think you ever work expectingthe reaction, I think you just do the work thatyou do," Zwick says. "I think if you work with oneeye cast in anticipation of a particular response,it'll never get there. I think you just try to beas involved in the material and as honest as youcan be."
And what do I think? I enjoyed the movie. Thetense images of unpredictable terror scared me,the injustices angered me, Frank's plight movedme. I didn't sit through The Siege--I feltvery much a part of it. Zwick explains, "Movieshave taken on this role of being entirely toocomfortable and predictable...it's a verytranquil, almost soporific exercise. I don't thinkmovies have to be that way, I think they can beprovocative, and unsettling, and galvanizing, andupsetting. I don't necessarily think that bytalking about the possibilities of internment, orby talking about repression, that one galvanizesrepression, I think one galvanizes thought aboutrepression."
And thought about repression may help win the"battle for cultural perceptions," as Bybee callsit. "That's the message of the movie: that thereare some bad guys out there, but they're a fringe.We ought to be judged as individuals, and that asindividual Americans, every one of us--includingBruce Willis at the end--has rights."
When it comes to my identity, my life is onelong shopping period. Depending on when it'sconvenient, I'll play either into the mainstreamor the role of the outsider. My name isn't toohard to pronounce and my skin tone is merely"swarthy," so it's easy to pass as notparticularly "ethnic." Alternately, whendiscussion group announcements accusingly ask me"Why do all the black kids sit together in thecafeteria?" I answer to myself, "Well, at least myroommates have a 'colored man' like me eating withthem.'"
But I'm certain that I'm an American, and toquote Lee Greenwood, "At least I know I'm free."
For now.