United 93 |
Few movies in our age --or in any age for that matter-- have seen quite so many people scratching their chins wondering whether they are ready for the experience of writer-director Paul Greengrass's United 93.
The film about the 9/11 passengers who come to the conclusion that only direct action can save them, has garnered almost universal acclaim. Part of this praise, is almost certainly relief.
The confusion and horror of 9/11 activated an unprecedented jingoism in North America and Europe. It caused journalistic standards to plummet and sparked some truly appalling art; witness Neil Young's Let's Roll, a song whose lyrics are an embarrassing blot on an otherwise distinguished career.
For the most part, United 93 recreates what is most likely to have happened, and the movie sets about this task with an impressive single mindedness. Stock words we have come to associate with 9/11 --"freedom," "truth" and "democracy"-- aren't used at all either on the flight, or on the ground where air traffic controllers and the military try and work out what is going on.
While the bonding of passengers on board United 93 is, as the title suggests, integral to the story, no ideological theme is imposed upon their actions. They are ordinary people, desperate for a way out of the horror in which they find themselves. Their predicament is vividly portrayed.
Another effective aspect of United 93 is that the plot unfurls, at least initially, from the hijackers' points of view. Their fear, as well as their sense of mission, is captured so well that when they sit in the departure lounge, nervously blinking as they overhear cell phone conversations regarding passengers' plans for after they land, we have an awful sense of sharing their secret.
Although United 93 is in many ways a gripping and well-acted movie, I am somewhat surprised it should have achieved quite the level of praise that it has. One of the most obvious features of this film is the extent to which its sharp focus on a real life experience has limited its potential as drama.
While the hijackers are portrayed as real people, we are given little insight into their motivation. It's not the politics of our time that prevents this (last year's Syriana effectively took its audience into the world of a young man contemplating a suicide mission), but rather the heightened respect necessary when tackling an event which people are still grieving.
While the filmmakers may have been trying to remove a cultural bias, it's there all the same. Most of us automatically empathize with the lives of the hijack victims; we can all identify with terror and with calling home to tell our partners we love them. But mumbling prayers in a foreign language as the sun rises through the hotel room window, or shaving body hair are very different matters.
The many warning voices saying it is too soon for a drama about 9/11 have been largely swept aside in the rush to greet United 93. And yet many of the qualms remain. There can be something deeply claustrophobic about a drama woven intently around a specific event, especially when that event lives in such recent memory of its audience. Although we cannot blame the filmmakers for the advertising that surrounds their work, United 93 is not helped in this respect. The most circulated image promoting the film is of a plane flying over the head of the Statue of Liberty.
And there are also awkward details in the movie itself. The only passenger to panic, and nearly betray his fellow hostages' plans in the process, is Dutch. Did the filmmakers discover this was the case? (How could they have done?) Or was it dramatically necessary to find one weak link to increase the tension, but clearly out of the question to make this weak link an American?
If there is unsatisfactory flavour that lingers around United 93, it is at least partly emanating from the very point which critics have been fervently trying to dismiss.
In 1958, more than 45 years after the event, director Roy Ward Baker filmed A Night to Remember, from Walter Lord's non-fiction account of the sinking of the Titanic. Two generations after the terrible disaster, Lord and Baker had at their disposal a plethora of insights about society and the way people lived. They used this historical perspective to give their narrative a sense of inevitability.
Receiving ice warnings from nearby vessels, the wireless operator of the doomed steamship fires back messages to "keep out" while he continues to relay private messages from well-to-do passengers regarding the buying and selling of stocks.
This is a story about materialism and hubris. The "unsinkable" White Star liner is the battleground upon which the forces of "progress" and comfort meet their limitations.
The story of the Titanic had been told in film before 1958, but not well. It took more than four decades to get the proper distance to do justice to the disaster. Themes of historical events emerge over time.
The same, I suspect, is true of United 93.
Paul Butler is the author of the newly released novel NaGeira. His website is www.paulbutlernovelist.com
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