The subway is a porno
And the pavements they are a mess
I know you’ve supported me for a long time
Somehow I’m not impressed
But New York Cares…

Those lyrics are from Interpol’s “NYC,” one of the iconic songs of the immediate post-9/11 era of music. It’s a song that captures the confused emotional tenor of the city in the traumatic aftermath to that dark day 8 years ago, a mix of the old New York harsh-edged urbanity and the “United We Stand” solidarity of a city reborn amidst ashes.

Perhaps moreso than other cities, New York has that peculiar combination of crowded connectedness and desolate urban isolation. On one hand the city cares and accepts all people and all dreams; on the other, it is an impenetrable, callous machine of industry and ambition. On 9/11 both faces merged as the city in all of its seething terror and magnificence forever changed. Before that day, NYC was the incomprehensible nexus of the world. But after that day, NYC was forced to consider the truth of its mythos: that it is still just a city, vulnerable and imperfect as anything else.

I saw this film on the day my new niece, Clara, was born, and it could not have been a better capstone to an already joyous day. Before seeing the film, I’d been thinking of the significance of this newborn life—that today was its first day, the first of many days and years and moments (by the grace of God) that will constitute her life. Like the many thousands of other babies born that day, she sucked in the earth’s air for the first time, just as, simultaneously, hundreds of other humans did it for the last time.

And so as I watched David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I couldn’t help but reflect: what is life, indeed what is time, if not a series of entrances and exits and movements and moments? It all happens so quickly, and yet it is so vast.

This is a film about life.