"United 93" Provides Lessons to be Learned from 9/11
Mark Canavera
Issue date: 5/4/06 Section: Entertainment
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"United 93" attempts to recreate - in more or less real time - the "fourth flight" of 9/11, the one that did not hit the White House as intended but rather crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back against the Al Qaeda operatives who had hijacked the plane. The movie cuts between the flight itself, the National Air Traffic Control Center, and military command posts.
The idea to reenact this flight will seem brilliant to some and gimmicky to others. By selecting this very premise, writer-director Paul Greengrass set himself the task of not allowing the film to descend into mawkishness. To his great credit, it does not.
By the same token, however, Greengrass seems to believe that he is telling the definitive version of United Flight 93, an impossible task. He uses every possible tool in the toolbox of verisimilitude to accomplish this feat: painstaking research; jittery, hand-held camera work; shots angled so that we feel like we are scrunched on the plane; use of no-name actors; and involvement of some of the people actually involved in the event. He wants us to experience the morning as it actually happened.
Historical reenactments are a difficult affair, and they usually sound a false note. Even if we are likely to learn no small amount of history in this retelling, "United 93" is no exception. But there remain larger questions to be asked about why Greengrass felt compelled to reenact this particular story.
There are dueling artistic impulses at work here, and they work against each other to the film's detriment. On the one hand, Greengrass wants to commemorate the bravery of the flight's passengers, who realized that the hijackers were on a suicide mission and did what they could to stop the inevitable. In that sense, the movie is both humble and commendable.
But this is also a work of tremendous self-importance, Greengrass' attempt to elbow his way into the history of American filmmaking. Despite the importance of the film's element of commemoration, there is also a crass egotism on display. The director shows his presumptuousness that one man can write a universal history.
The movie purports to be apolitical, which surely no film about 9/11 - especially one that opens with one of the terrorists' recitation of the Koran - can be. Indeed, it seems to me that the movie works best at a purely political level - that is, as an indictment of the poor intelligence information management systems that hampered action which might have saved lives. The 9/11 Commission could not have asked for a more damning portrait of the state of intelligence to bolster their plea for reform.
As the movie ended, I felt strangely cold; it had not provided the catharsis that I expected. I suspect that my reaction resulted not because I already knew what was coming but rather because the movie does not do the difficult work of tragedy. Stuck in the past, the movie fails to prod us into thinking about how 9/11 - more precisely, United Flight 93 - can help us to live better in the future.
Final grade (on the Dean's recommended grading scale): B+
The idea to reenact this flight will seem brilliant to some and gimmicky to others. By selecting this very premise, writer-director Paul Greengrass set himself the task of not allowing the film to descend into mawkishness. To his great credit, it does not.
By the same token, however, Greengrass seems to believe that he is telling the definitive version of United Flight 93, an impossible task. He uses every possible tool in the toolbox of verisimilitude to accomplish this feat: painstaking research; jittery, hand-held camera work; shots angled so that we feel like we are scrunched on the plane; use of no-name actors; and involvement of some of the people actually involved in the event. He wants us to experience the morning as it actually happened.
Historical reenactments are a difficult affair, and they usually sound a false note. Even if we are likely to learn no small amount of history in this retelling, "United 93" is no exception. But there remain larger questions to be asked about why Greengrass felt compelled to reenact this particular story.
There are dueling artistic impulses at work here, and they work against each other to the film's detriment. On the one hand, Greengrass wants to commemorate the bravery of the flight's passengers, who realized that the hijackers were on a suicide mission and did what they could to stop the inevitable. In that sense, the movie is both humble and commendable.
But this is also a work of tremendous self-importance, Greengrass' attempt to elbow his way into the history of American filmmaking. Despite the importance of the film's element of commemoration, there is also a crass egotism on display. The director shows his presumptuousness that one man can write a universal history.
The movie purports to be apolitical, which surely no film about 9/11 - especially one that opens with one of the terrorists' recitation of the Koran - can be. Indeed, it seems to me that the movie works best at a purely political level - that is, as an indictment of the poor intelligence information management systems that hampered action which might have saved lives. The 9/11 Commission could not have asked for a more damning portrait of the state of intelligence to bolster their plea for reform.
As the movie ended, I felt strangely cold; it had not provided the catharsis that I expected. I suspect that my reaction resulted not because I already knew what was coming but rather because the movie does not do the difficult work of tragedy. Stuck in the past, the movie fails to prod us into thinking about how 9/11 - more precisely, United Flight 93 - can help us to live better in the future.
Final grade (on the Dean's recommended grading scale): B+
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