Let's roll
United 93: that's entertainment?
I've been looking forward to the release of Paul Greengrass's United 93 ever since I first heard about it and it was called Flight 93. As a commited fan of disaster movies, I would have been excited about any film set on an imperilled plane, but this was, of course, different: the true (or at least as true as we can gather) story of what happened to the hijacked plane that didn't hit its target on September 11, 2001. Now, conspiracy theories abound, and one of the more extreme I've picked up on the internet is that there was not United 93 (I know!), but for the purposes of this film, let's imagine there was, and that it crashed into a Pennsylvanian field, killing everybody onboard, on its way to the White House. That makes for a potentially neutered action movie, like Titanic without any room for dramatic manoeuvre. But Paul Greengrass could simply not have made a better job of it.
As covered in just about every review I've read, United 93 is a new class of nailbiting cinematic experience. It's the very fact that we know they're all going to die that makes it so compelling and, at times, almost unbearable. (And it's been made clear that the relatives of those who died have given it their blessing - albeit, you'd have to assume, a very uncomfortable one.) It's only 90 minutes long, all shot on queasy hand-held camera, as is Greengrass's stock in trade (Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Supremacy), and after the first plane hits the World Trade Center - or when it chillingly disappears from the air traffic control radar "somewhere above the city" - it's in real time, which puts you right there in the thick of the moment. If you thought you'd become perhaps desensitised to those images of the planes hitting the towers, think again. In this film, although it happens in the background, or on CNN, it hits you in the guts, because you're experiencing it with air traffic and military professionals and it's still shocking. If the military are shocked, you're entitled to be. Indeed, the response to the mounting disaster accounts for just as much screen-time as the stricken passengers on UAL93. The head of the Federal Aviation Authority, Ben Sliney, who eventually shuts down US air space, with 4200 planes in it, is played by himself - a performance that's beyond performance but fits the docudrama style. At no point does Greengrass sensationalise. Even the fabled passenger rebellion is handled with confusion, and the famous line, "Let's roll," is simply heard in the general hubbub.
I spent a lot of this film with my hands over my mouth. Right from the start, when the doomed passengers, whom we never get to know, wait in the departure lounge, the feeling is one of dread. The simple, mundane details of flying - the plastic trays the food comes on, the plastic cups of water, the unwatched safety film, the little pillows against which tired commuter heads are propped - become engorged with portent. And the four hijackers, whose whispered recitations from the Koran open the film, are presented as human beings - nervous, confused, fallible but ultimately driven. When the plane is a mere 20 minutes away from its target (did the pilot really have a small clipping of the White House stuck to the steering column so he knew what to aim for?), the authority of the terrorists, gained by shouting, sticking knives into a couple of necks and waving the detonator of a bomb, is at a low ebb. Nobody would make a fictional hijack drama like this. Too messy. Too amateurish. Too difficult. And that's the film's saving grace - whether or not it seeks to make entertainment out of a non-fictional tragedy (and the trailers are pretty disrespectful, especially the gravel-voiced radio ads), the film itself is no fun whatsoever. There were two groups of potentially noisy and silly teenagers at the Wimbledon Odeon, giggling through the ads and trailers, and even they shut up once the film started.
Go and see it. But don't buy popcorn. Then have a trawl around the conspiracy sites. If there's one thing United 93 does almost editorialise, it's the impotent response of the Bush administration. The military at the command centre, shouting out manly stuff like, "Scramble Langley, Weapons!", are also seen virtually begging the office of Bush or Cheney for appropriate rules of engagement and the authority to shoot down the hijacked planes, and get nothing. The President is literally missing. Meanwhile, when two fighters are scrambled, they fly in the wrong direction. And a caption at the end states that the White House didn't know anything about the plight of UAL93 until four minutes after it had crashed. Nothing was done. Why was nothing done?
posted by Andrew Collins @ 8:12 AM
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There's only one decent response to this film: too soon.
For whom? And why? The relatives were involved in the making of it. And it doesn't sensationalise it, which, I suspect, Oliver Stone's forthcoming film about firefighters in the Tower, will.
Re: "Why was nothing done?"
What should or could have been done, Andrew?
I too have concerns about the film, not because it's too soon but because I'm not sure why people need to see it. It seems voyeuristic to me.
United 93 is not voyeuristic. It speaks of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation, and since it was made with the blessing of the relatives of those who died, I can't see a problem. It forces you to face unpalatable truths. Most fictional Hollywood films allow you to escape the horrors of the world (sometimes by depicting worse horrors), but this one - and you can choose not to go and see it - takes us back to a particular day and a particular event and makes us relive it, from a perspective none of us could have previously imagined. It's not sensational. You only see the Twin Towers on telly or in the background. On the ground it's based on record not imagination. The news is voyeuristic and the news is just as artfully edited, yet we are expected to take the news at face value, and it's in our living rooms.
It seems clear that the Administration reacted slowly. Why? The world's number one superpower, who can scramble jets to bomb a far away Middle Eastern country at the flick of a switch, couldn't even get a couple of fighters to even monitor, never mind shoot down, a commercial airliner on the East coast of America?
Regarding the second point, I guess my question really is what difference would it have made if the fighters had got there? The slow response doesn't reflect well on the US, but ultimately everyone on board was going to die either way. Ironically the most widely held conspiracy theory (that the fighter planes did get there) is founded on an assumption of the infallibility of America's military machine.
I didn't say the film was voyeuristic; I can't comment on that. My intended meaning was that the need to see the film seems voyeuristic to me. That's not a value judgement on anyone who wants to see it, it just reflects my own thoughts on the prospect of seeing it. I think I can imagine what it was like to be on that plane. I might be wrong in that but I'm probably not much more wrong than Paul Greengrass or anyone else. I'm not sure what sort of gratification I'd be getting from watching the film. And I'm not sure what I can learn from it that I couldn't learn from a "drier" documentary.
The whole 9/11 thing has been hijacked (the word is appropriate) by the Bush administration. Even grieving relatives have motives, and if this film goes some way towards taking this plane, and the people on board, back from Bush then I applaud it. And I acknowledge from the reviews that it is a well made film. I just don't want to see it. And I don't understand why anyone would want to see it (film scholars apart - clearly it's an important film) other than for slightly dubious reasons. Perhaps I would have fewer qualms if the film were not being sold so clearly as entertainment.
Dave, I dislike the way the film is being sold. The fast editing of the trailers are inappropriate and make it look like a different film. The radio ads, as mentioned, are worse. So I can understand your reservations. But I don't consider myself a voyeur for wanting to experience it. As I said, I have bigger problems with the TV news.
I am looking forward to seeing this, while not wanting to sound disrespectful to the victims of 9/11 I feel that 5 years is enough time to be able to appreciate this film for it's merits. Knowing the outcome and the way that the news portrayed the events of that day gives us a sense of almost having seen the film before anyway. It's got the highest Metacritic score of the year (93) by a long margin and I'll gladly take it over the Stone film which even has an offensive poster.
I agree with you about TV news, by the way. And as I said, I don't disrespect anyone for wanting to see the film. I just don't understand that need. (That said, I've seen fewer films at the cinema than Steve Lamacq has!)
I wonder how long before a July 7th movie goes into production? I hate flying anyway, so there's little chance of me going to see this. I still haven't recovered from seeing the extremely-detailed plane crash scene in...err...that American horror where the teenagers cheat death.
I hate so many things about this film: the way that the 'blessing' given it by relatives is supposed to invalidate any criticism on grounds of taste ('Hey, if the relatives are cool with it, who am I to feel?'), the abovementioned radio and TV commercials, the very idea that a medium as sensationalist as cinema can have anything to 'say' on the subject, the curious sanctimony of film makers who mistake their own crassness in making such films for bravery. Like the recent drama about the Moors Murders (brilliantly interrupted by ads for insurance and shiny cars) this film merely proves that everything is now fair game for prurient exploitation.
The makers of United 93 don't need me to mount an official defence, and I speak only as an audience member, Adrian, but I wasn't using the blessing of the relatives to justify the film, merely to counter any accusations that the film rides roughshod over the memory of those who died. It doesn't invalidate criticism, as those who are criticising it prove. The only discomfort I felt while watching it (and it is not a comfortable, sanitised experience) was in the awful knowledge of the outcome, the sense of certain doom. An unusual feeling while watching a film. I don't think United 93 has anything more profound to say than this was a terrible day and that ordinary folk were bound up in it. It pinpoints flaws in the US Administration's response, and reminds us how committed to a religious cause, and yet still human, the hijackers were. They are not presented as evil monsters, which you must admit is a relief. I found the Moors Murders drama respectful and interesting. It certainly wasn't sensational. And you can hardly blame the filmmakers for the adverts. It says more about the advertisers than the drama itself. Why would they want to advertise next to child murder? You feel strongly about this issue, but where do you draw the line? Should documentaries be shown at the cinema, like Fahrenheit 911, which included stuff about the WTC attacks? Should dramas be made about the Holocaust? Should money be made by authors writing about the Holocaust or September 11?
Maybe it's just the short length of time it's taken to make the movie? Sure, it was inevitable it was going to be made, but the situation is still so incredibly sensitive and fresh in the mind.
I've heard that looking at accident scenes, for example, is instinctive survival behaviour to do with gathering potentially life-saving information. Our sensitivity often overrides that instinct, but it's still there. I wonder if this kind of film is motivated by that subconscious need - so you can move on.
Slightly bizarrely, I went to see "Prime" at the weekend, and saw a trailer for United 93. It was preceded, of course, by one of those screens that assurred me "this trailer is suitable for this feature".
Er... how, exactly?
Am planning to see it this weekend.
Sad to see no one rushing to make a movie about Iran Air Flight 655, surely not too soon for that one ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
Perhaps anchoring the USS Vincennes in New York harbour would have been a good idea pre 9/11. Proven defence against civil aviation !
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