Tear Jerker / Come from Away

Inevitable, as with anything involving 9/11.

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• The opening song, "Welcome to the Rock" describes the people of Gander going about their days. The children go to school, the adults go to work. It's a beautiful day just like any other.
  And I turn on the radio...
• The town of Gander immediately launches into doing anything and everything they can to help the passengers: getting food, medicine, places to sleep, etc. Everyone in town is moved to kindness to help these poor strangers, but there is another reason for their desire to help: they need something to distract them from what they've been seeing on the television.
  • A bit of Reality Subtext is discussed in the book. Mayor Claude Elliott told Joel Hatch of the Arrow Air crash in Gander in 1985: a DC-8 carrying 248 peacekeeping U.S. military personnel home crashed on takeoff, killing everyone on board. The town was forced to watch the news play out, powerless to help the victims. It had a profound effect on the Ganderites. They erected a memorial for the soldiers. It's implied the real-life town threw themselves into helping the Plane People out of kindness but also partially because of this event, Elliott in particular because he was a "man on a mission" to help others.
• At the end of "28 Hours / Wherever We Are," Captain Bass is speaking to her husband on the phone when she learns that her friend, Charles, is missing or dead. In the movie, her face crumples briefly in grief, before she rallies herself and tells Tom "I'm fine." Four songs later, we find out that "Charles" is Charles F. Burlingame, captain of American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon. Bass had just seen him in a pub in London.
• "Lead Us Out of the Night" where everyone learns about what really happened in New York and see the Towers fall on TV. The televisions are never shown, but we see the passengers flinch and gasp—and we can imagine what they're seeing.
  Kevin: We watch those images for hours.... until someone finally turns the TV off.
• "Something's Missing", particularly this gut punch:
  Beulah: Hello, you've reached Gander Academy. This is Beulah Davis, how can I help you?
  Hannah: He's gone. It's over.
  • What arguably makes this even worse is that Hannah mentions earlier in the show that she had received word that her son hadn't even been scheduled for active duty on that day.
  • A moment or two later:
    Hannah: You are here
    At the end of a moment
    At the end of the world
    You are here
    On the edge of the ocean
    Where the story ends...
  • Made even worse when one remembers that during "I Am Here", Hannah never has doubt that her son will come home (she speaks of Kevin coming home as "when" not if)
• The last few lines of "Me and the Sky" hit hard, especially after the joy the rest of the song has.
  Beverley: Suddenly I'm flying Paris to Dallas
  Across The Atlantic and feeling calm
  When suddenly someone on air to air traffic says
  "At 8:46 there's been a terrorist action"
  And the one thing I loved more than anything was used as the bomb.
  Suddenly I'm in a hotel
  Suddenly something has died
  Suddenly there's something in between me and the sky...
• The day after the forced landing, the "strays" find various ways to cope. Hannah stays by the phones, desperate to hear about her son. Diane, Nick, and the Kevins head out into the town just to try and breathe. Beulah and the other citizens of Gander continue with their nonstop work. Then, in the middle of the day, every single person in Gander stops for America's national moment of silence. Kevin sadly confesses that he doubts such a thing would have happened back home.
• "Prayer" is one big Tearjerker crossed with a Heartwarming Moment, especially when the prayers of all the different religions come together in harmony towards the end of the song.
• At the end of "Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere," Bass reunites with her husband Tom at last. Throughout the musical she communicates to him over the phone, and keeps reassuring him, "No, I'm fine, Tom. I'm fine." This time, her voice cracks—you can just hear all the stress and relief come at her all at once.
• All of the discrimination shown towards Ali (an Egyptian Muslim) can be this, especially since it culminates in him being strip-searched before being allowed on the plane after an air stewardesses tells Captain Bass that she doesn't feel safe after seeing him—and Bass notes that it's the most thorough strip-search she's ever seen. This greatly violates Ali's religious beliefs, as the space between his stomach and knees is only supposed to be seen by his wife. We don't see it happen but the narration Ali and Captain Bass give about it is absolutely heart-wrenching, especially given that Ali is just as scared and confused by what's happening as the rest of them are.
• Throughout the show, Bonnie's determination to care for the animals on the plane - especially Unga the pregnant "rare bonobo chimpanzee" and her mate - are mostly Played for Laughs. Then, as Bonnie is saying goodbye to the animals, we learn that Unga lost the baby. It's just one more little tragedy amongst all the others.
• On a similar note, it's clear that the Kevins' relationship is potentially in trouble from the start but watching their (both perfectly understandable) reactions to the crisis drive them apart - to the point where on the otherwise joyous plane journey back to America, they can't even look at each other and they break up soon after they're home - is very upsetting.
• Bob's fear that he would get robbed or shot is extremely well-founded where he came from, and poignant when voiced by a Black actor, given the anti-Black sentiments in America and the murders of innocent Black people in the media. The fact that he starts out so untrusting, almost paranoid, and couldn't believe the Gander residents are exactly that kind is a sobering reminder, despite the laughs these lines often garner from audience members.
• Ali's phone call home, in untranslated Arabic. The last sentence cues some passengers into making Islamophobic threats against him.
  I am well, thanks be to God. The food here is very good. It is incredible. But, there are people, there are a lot of people here. They look at me as if I have committed a crime.
• The film opens with a shot of an empty Times Square in the midst of the pandemic. It's very eerie seeing the once bustling "center of the universe" deserted, an uncanny parallel to what it was like immediately following the 9/11 attacks.
• A Newfoundlander seeks out a rabbi who was on one of the planes to talk. He reveals he was sent to Canada when World War II started, and he's Jewish. His parents instructed him to never, ever reveal his Judaism to anyone for the sake of his safety—and he never did, not even after the war's been over for over fifty years, not even to his own wife. However, seeing how many people died in the 9/11 attacks and how many stories were lost forever, he realized he couldn't keep it in any longer. The rabbi gives him a kippah and leads him in a Hebrew prayer.
  • He says he was born in Poland, he thinks. He was sent over as a very young boy, and it's been so long that he can't even be certain where his family was from anymore.
  • Historically, many of the Jewish children evacuated from Poland and Germany never saw their families again, either because they were killed or because they were unable to find a way to contact them after the war ended. Many of the children started new lives in America, England, or Canada, and had to leave their parents, culture, and home country behind forever. The man's dialogue makes it easy to infer that this was the case for him; there's a good chance he doesn't actually know whether his parents survived the war or not.