Review

Review Date: 30-April-06
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Juicy

United 93 (2006)

United 93 is not what I expected, but by being less, it's more. The marketing of the first major motion picture about 9/11 focused on the filmmakers' sensitivity to the subject matter and the notion that the passengers aboard the titular flight were heroes. (I myself was attracted to the line about them sitting down as strangers and rising up as one.) Yet as proof of writer/director Paul Greengrass' sensitivity, his reenactment of what took place on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania doesn't create or celebrate larger-than-life crusaders for courage, virtue, or anything else. His telling of the story is raw (i.e., unglamorous and painful, albeit dignified) and that is the source of its power. Having considered his matter-of-fact approach, I doubt anyone could have made a better or more appropriate movie about the subject than this.

Calling United 93 a "movie" sounds odd, though, since it defies genre and sets out to accomplish something unique in historical and cultural significance. Everything has changed since that day in 2001, and now we go to the theater seeking understanding and catharsis as well as entertainment. Greengrass lays out the events of 9/11 in such a way that they might be gripping even if we didn't know they were true (though I daresay most viewers would think, "Who came up with such a macabre concept?"). Much of the first hour is devoted to the FAA and military staff (some playing themselves) who first noticed the hijacked planes, watched in horror as the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were hit, and then scrambled to establish a position of national safety. Early pangs abound as we see how long it took these men and women to believe that the explosions shown on CNN and the renegade commercial aircraft could be linked. Now that type of innocence is lost.

And then there were the forty-odd souls aboard United Flight 93, including four young Muslims who met dread and death alongside the Americans they longed to destroy. Greengrass not only portrays these men as real people, he repeatedly finds parallels between their experience and that of their victims. This illustrates his refusal to go for the easier, pip-pip! depiction of heroism — and rightly so, since somebody somewhere views the hijackers as heroes too. Although it's essentially a hindsight documentary, United 93 presents the thought-provoking truth that people take extreme action when they feel they must. This isn't to say that perceived necessity makes the action right. The passengers banded together and tried to wrest control of the cockpit from suicidal terrorists: this is something people do when pressed between life and death (and I agree it was death they tried to avoid more than destruction of a target in Washington). On the other hand, the Arabs stabbed the pilots and two others and tried to martyr themselves to a hopeless cause: this is something people do when driven by hatred and religion. Human impulses are similar but our points of view diverse, and in this day and age they are bound to bump against each other. 9/11 was a terrible example of how this can happen, but United 93 is a fine example of how a film can address what went on and why.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.