United 93 (2006)

A Truely Moving Film

This is a very well put together movie. Emotional, heart rending and devestating. The ending either brings tears to my eyes or makes me cry, without fail every time I watch it. The vision of the ground rushing up to meet you and then blackness really sticks in your mind. October 6, 2008

United 93

This is a respectful, well-acted, honest, and as scrupulously accurate a cinematic account of the tragic flight of United 93 as we are probably ever going to see. For the few of you who don't know (and for you "Truthers" who disrespectfully call people "sheeple"), United 93 was the fourth plane hijacked on September 11, 2001. The plane was turned toward Washington DC by the terrorists, but it never got there, instead crashing into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. As far as we can tell, the passengers attempted to seize the plane from the hijackers, who drove it a full speed straight into the earth. No one survived.

Some of what we see onscreen is necessarily supposition, based on ambient sounds in cellphone and airphone calls made by the passengers. We'll never know if the passengers succeeded in taking the plane even for a moment, but I like to think so.

People have said that this film is exploitative. They are, of course, welcome to their opinions, but there is nothing exploitative about UNITED 93, any more than there was anything exploitative about APOLLO 13. Film has become a medium for reporting history, hopefully responsibly.

"9/11 Truthers," in love with conspiracy theories, advance the idea that the government planned the entire incident, but their "facts" are made of inference upon inference, skewed to acheive a particular result. Bushworld did not need 9/11 to advance it's Preemptive War Doctrine; any of a score of minor incidents would have sufficed. Hitler started World War II over a border incident at Gleiwitz, a phony incident in which German soldiers battled other German soldiers masquerading as Polish soldiers. A few phony mannequin soldiers were even "killed."

But there was certainly nothing phony about the deaths on 9/11.

The media and the establishment have made "heroes" out of the Flight 93 passengers, but this both embellishes and obscures the truth. Americans tend to like their "heroes" larger than life, infallible, brave beyond reckoning, and unblemished, the types of mythic figures of which we make statues.

Yet we forget that the true heroes are everyday people, like fathers and mothers who go to work each day, return home each night, and dedicate their lives to the kids and to little things like painting the garage, and people who keep on with an exhausting and impossible task to the end no matter the result.

The Flight 93 passengers are these kinds of heroes, heroes without quotation marks.

After hearing the news that the World Trade Center and The Pentagon had been attacked, realizing that they themselves were doomed if they did nothing, and faced with the reality that they most likely would die anyway, they fought back against the zeal-infected hijackers with airline cutlery, hot water, and sheer determination. Flight 93 became a manned cruise missile, a kamikaze mission, and a battleground on which a group of ordinary, terrified people transcended fear in order to take back what had been taken from them, their lives. That they died in no way diminishes what they accomplished.

This film is a fitting memorial to them. September 18, 2008

Remembrance

I saw this late last night and have to say, I watched it knowing I wouldn't be able to sleep afterwards and wanting to stop watching. Hard to do though, such is the grip the director exerts.

Of course, the story itself is so deeply compelling that even if it had been badly made it would have been dificult to switch off. The sense of "this could just as easily have happened to me" is overwhelming.

We all have memories of that day, and one of mine is of a little snippet of the confusion: at one point the media was announcing that a bomb/plane had hit the State Department, a story that disappeared without trace within hours. That confusion, when it is not clear what is true and what is not, is well-captured here - particularly among the air-traffic controllers.

After the second plane hit no one knew whether there was just one more to come or fifty. Of the thousands of planes flying over the US, any number could have been potential missiles. And clearly, no one had ever envisaged the possibility of something like this happening, so for a moment all the experts and professionals were lost in a "what do we do now" helplessness.

The sheer courage of the passengers in rebelling should never be underestimated. It would have been remarkable even if there had been previous, similar hijackings, and from the beginning it had been obvious what was going on. In the heat of that terrible moment, in which almost everyone else was dumbfounded or paralysed, it was truly extraordinary. September 15, 2008

Not entirely factual, but very truthful

United 93 is one of the most harrowing movie experiences you're likely to have. This is because, of course, it is based on a real event and the viewer will know the outcome - everyone on the plane dies. As such, there is no way to know how many of the events depicted on the screen are factual - did the passengers overcome 2 of the hijackers and force their way into the cockpit? Was the plane headed for the Capitol? (personally, I think it more likely it was headed to the Pentagon, just as 2 planes headed to the WTC) Was the leader really having second thoughts? If not, why did the hijackers take so long to make their moves, especially since they were already delayed 30 minutes before takeoff?

As the writer and the director, Paul Greengrass speculates on the answers to these questions and presents a logical sequence of events, interspersed with factually verifiable events such as the timing of the WTC hits and the air traffic controllers' conversations. These scenes recreate the confusion of 9/11 extremely effectively because, as Greengrass points out in the Director's commentary (multiple times), the use of airliners as cruise missiles was simply an inconceivable event.

Most difficult to watch, however, are the phone calls home from the passengers on the plane as they call to say good-bye. Presumably these are the actual words spoken by the passengers, and that verity is extremely personal and difficult to watch.

So, if the film is not factual, and does not even claim to be factual, what does it have going for it? Basically, it feels True. It never dramatizes the events, and often the dialogue feels "overheard" (even the famous "Let's roll"). The passengers are scared, but in their fear they realise (perhaps the first in the country) what's going on and choose to act. We never learn anything about them - another correct step by Greengrass, whose goal appears to be putting the film viewer on the plane with the passengers. They are strangers to us, they are strangers to each other, but they are all in it together and trust each. Greengrass has been criticized for humanizing the hijackers. But, of course, the hijackers WERE humans, and to portray them as monsters or psychopaths would deny human nature.

Obviously many (most?) will find the film impossible to watch. For those that can (and you know who you are), you will find newfound respect for the courage of the common man, and newfound sympathy for the people involved - not only those that perished, but those air traffic controllers and others that tried their best in an impossible situation to regain control of a situation they could not have conceieved of that morning when they went to work. September 9, 2008

feels real?

You want reality? People want to talk about a movie being realistic and people talk about real events being movie-like. People that were even at historic events will say "it was like a movie". How can you ever know what it would be like to be on a plane that you and everyone on board knows is going to crash? You can't. It transcends waking consciousness. It still can be imagined, however. It can be portrayed in such a way as to give you the viewer *some* idea -I really believe this after seeing UNITED 93. And it is scary as hell. If you allow yourself to be absorbed by this film I feel you'll come as close as a movie can take you in having some sense -just some- of the sheer terror. You are going to die. It's over. It is over. Your life is gone. You begin to realize this. At first there is denial of coarse but one way or another reality sets in for you. You will never see your family again. You will never eat again, hug your child again, go to the park again, go to the movies again, make love again, nothing. Your going to die in the worst way. You are about to be broken, ripped apart, burned. What awaits you? Are you even able to think or you just overcome? The horror. The flood of emotion, of thoughts, images, your life flashing before you. People freaking out around you. Murderous little foreign relgious nuts, creeps with box cutters stabbing people. What are you going to do? What do you do? What can you do? You'll never really know unless your in that situation. Some people on that plane decided not to just sit there and wait to die. That's not too bad a way to go out. UNITED 93 is a fine film and does justice to this historic moment in American history. Credit is to be given to director Paul Greengrass [THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, and the upcoming GREEN ZONE(!)] for his talents in depicting real-life events in such an outstanding way.

Watch it alone or with someone who can sit through a movie without running their mouth. Turn the lights off, turn the cell phone off, shut up, and sit there straight through, no interruptions. But don't buy it, it's a rental. I don't know why or how someone would want to sit through this ride multiple times. One, maybe two trips is enough.
September 9, 2008

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