“The Debt” (113 min., R) by director John Madden is a stirring and gripping tale weighing some of the best questions man has asked himself in the latter 20th century. It is a story of love and passion, lies and deceit, longing and loss, cowardliness and heroism. Mr. Madden has become a master of  the use of imagery, scintilating musical compositions, and emotional contrasts to produce an almost surreal portrait painted against a melancholy landscape.

Set in 1966 in the fledgling nation of Israel, three young Mossad agents (Israel’s top secret paramilitary spy network) are sent deep undercover in East Berlin to retrieve a nefarious ex-nazi doctor. Known as the “Surgeon of Birkenau” and played poignantly by Jesper Christensten, Dieter Vogel is the epitome of evil, a cold and calculated man strongly befitting such a devious role. Of course the mission goes awry, and the three agents will have to piece together a case which will shape both the futures of a nation yearning for justice, retribution, and a sense of identity;  and ultimately the fate of their very own lives. The film is not without its flaws, but the ending will leave an indelible mark on its audiences who will assuredly ask the question which addresses the crux of the movie. By living a lie does one become one?

Today, I went down to the 9/11 memorial. I came idealistically thinking that my coming would ease the burden and grief, weighing down on so many families of our city. That the remembrance would wash away the blood and tears, and their lives would ravel together like a spool of yarn, leaving the trauma and sadness to teeter in the dust. To take pain in their pain, and solace in their solace. I presume I am wrong, but it was a marvelous spectacle nonetheless.

On 9/11, I was in the 4^th grade amidst the great havoc and emotional upheaval, which gripped this city. My mother hearing rumors of a massively orchestrated terrorist attack whisked me out of school and into the comforts of our Long Island home where no evil lurked and no stone had been left unturned. Even now, thinking that my traumatic experience of the events of that day took place in a place so absolute, so familiar, tends to bother me. We walked through the doors and into the living room numbly watching the newsreels play the dark day’s events. Suddenly, images of the twin towers afire cluttered the television set. It was as if our lives were playing the center of some grand scene where the world crumbles down around us and we are to bear witness to its demise. Then the images cut, and the unprecedented occurred. The Twins Towers began to collapse. First the north, then the south.

As I watched, a loud sound tinged the room. Not preceding nor even following their collapse. It was directly during their descent that the noise began to emanate. Taken aback I turned to my mother, my protector, and stared as her face gaping and contorted with expressions of horror let out a bold SCREAM. Indeed, she no longer had a face at all; rather a large gaping void had taken its place leaving a black hole, a deep dark cavernous well in its stead. The disturbance had the feeling of a monotonous drone, like that buzzing noise you hear after you’ve had the wind knocked out of you. It sounded of instinctive trepidation and fear, of places and beings not meant for this world or at least in a world of good. And this was my memory, my moment to keep and to guide for all of time.

I think we lost ourselves out of that tragedy. It was almost as if the period before and after 9/11 were as a blur. Not quite recognizable but distinctly specific and deliberate. Yes, they were deliberate. Not necessarily knowing what to do we embarked upon two despicable wars in the name of freedom and liberty. And in freedom and liberty we crushed our enemies, slowly and methodically. Black and White, we the people who worshipped the light waged war against those adherents of the dark, apparitions and ghosts prowling the dead of night. But in this abstraction did we win the war of ours souls before that of the sword? Did we weigh the rights and wrongs or did we mindlessly, consciously, commit ourselves to the further degradation of mankind. Did we manipulate both good and evil, and in the process turn morality into some ugly BITCH of a thing?

Sometimes I wonder whether it mattered at all that we were attacked on 9/11. Whether we were enslaved to fight these battles anyway and that those who had perished would have died all the same be it of the body or the mind. As it is always is, things are not as they appear to be. Logic rarely dictates reality. Concepts evade and the mind continues to wonder. How it is possible when everyone runs out of a burning building there are always the brave few who run into it? And to know that the 366 of the best of mankind, firefighters and police officers, none of whom were in the buildings at the point of attack, found themselves all the same mixed with rubble and bone atop the pile. So when the debris fell upon the whole of the city that day, it fell with it the remains of these beautiful men and women, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers. And their bodies and souls were interspersed with the lot of New York. All as one, forever and always.

But I was so very young at the time of its happening. Helplessly unaware of the stark realities of the world. Upon further review in fact, my story apparently checks untrue entirely. My mother never picked me up at school like so many others that day. When I returned home she had already been there deeply immersed with the unfolding events, all too aware that I would not understand nor grasp the magnitude of such an occurrence.

To me it is all irrelevant.  We remember as we want to remember but more importantly as we MUST remember. My memories of that day as an expression of a manifested reality built from my thoughts and feelings, my emotional impressions; are bolder and truer than any non-fictional account. And it is as this that I recollect.

The SCREAM has remained with me. It has taken up a persona of transient elusiveness, floating majestically through both space and time. Out of my nightmares and haunted visions lurking in the black. And on days of darkness and despair where all seems lost and nothing is sacred, I can still see my mother SCREAMING silently, and me being sucked into the void, silently, ever so, screaming right on back at her.