Anyone who thinks it’s too soon to discuss the events of 9/11 has not seen “United 93.” They will accuse it of exploiting the greatest tragedy in American history for the purposes of entertainment, but what they do not know is that this is a masterpiece of filmmaking and a bombshell of the true nature of humanity.
Paul Greengrass’s work on “United 93” pays an honorable tribute to the heroic people killed in the hijacked plane that did not reach its target by staying strictly truthful to the source material. What is seen is not dramatized or exaggerated. It is a reenactment of the day’s events, based on actual conversations from the plane and on the ground, all in real time. Watch it, and try not to be awestruck by the might of this film. To not be is to snub the valiant efforts of the people on board.
In the opening scene of the film, we meet the terrorists on United 93. Their introduction marks the first difference between most modern action movies. These characters are not evil, but human. They possess the same fear and anxiety of anyone in that position. When the film was released, there’s no doubt a few conservatives were calling for the persecution of the so-called demonic, freedom-hating barbarians responsible for the attack. But consider the first concern of audience members of “United 93”: The troubling exploitation of people in mortal danger. To make the enemy worse than human would be to put the passengers through even more suffering. No comfort would come from that.
On the ground, Greengrass re-creates the exact conversations of the employees at the Air Traffic Control Centers around the country. The jargon is thick, the dialect is authentic and the mood is tense. There’s no sugarcoating here, and to do so would be another misstep.
But the non-dramatization does not subtract from the film’s intensity. When it is realized the first plane has just hit the World Trade Center, it’s not a scream or an explosion that marks it. It’s the blip from a machine as the plane disappears from the radar detector. To make such a powerful scene from something as simple as that is unprecedented.
There’s another when it is discovered that there is not just one hijacking, but “Plural. Planes.” A third moment is when CNN is just turned on to reveal the gaping hole inside the tower that is clearly not made from “a small plane.” Then there’s the second plane itself. You could watch the plane hit the tower over and over again and not feel as shocked as watching it here in what may as well be live footage.
But I’ve not even begun to discuss what happens aboard United 93. The people are not cookie-cutout victims from other disaster films. They are people like any other. The assumptions that can be made about them come from what you can see with your own eyes. In both their first and final moments, there are no “heroics,” but people acting as is necessary. To watch them act is to be sitting beside them, just another terrified passenger praying for success.
It’s also important to realize that the film takes place in a pre-9/11 world. There are no Muslim stereotypes, no political statements and no patriotic war speeches. These people had no idea what was to come after these attacks. They had not even seen images of the destroyed towers. This was just a normal day.
Greengrass’s cinematography is inspired. His onboard filming replicates the same experience of actually being there, and his chilling finale is not a large explosion but an artistic cut to plain, black silence, just as death must feel like.
Greengrass casts no recognizable actors, so no character is more important than the other. As a consequence, his climactic scene is not a passionate outpouring of emotions by an actor fishing for an Oscar, but a lineup of seemingly identical human beings each opening up their soul as they say their last goodbyes to their loved ones. If the characters’ final words sound repetitive, it’s not bad writing, for it’s impossible to criticize the hurried words of someone in their last moments.
9/11 is the day both America and the world will remember for all time, and “United 93” is the film they will always remember along with it.
4 stars
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