United 93 - The Movie

[RDK]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet. It opens today. I don't usually like to pimp my studio's product, but I saw it a couple of weeks ago and think it's a very fine film. Was interested in hearing your thoughts...

edit: Hmm. I put this in Non-Political becaue i was hoping to keep the discussion on the film, but obviously that might not be possible depending on how the thread develops. So if anyone objects, Jim, feel free to move it to the Political Forum.

Edited April 28, 2006 by RDK

[Free For All]

I'm curious to hear the board members' comments on this one. It looks to be quite an emotional experience.

[7/4]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet. It opens today. I don't usually like to pimp my studio's product, but I saw it a couple of weeks ago and think it's a very fine film. Was interested in hearing your thoughts...

Too soon, if at all for me. I live a bit too close to the Trade Towers to be very excited about this one. I know U93 didn't smack in to the TT on 9/11, but I'm pretty sure the 2nd plane that did...took off from Newark and made it's u-turn somewhere around here. Possibly right over my apt, I live only 10 miles south of the airport. I've seen my building taking off and landing at Newark.

[Noj]

Why make a movie about something that will end so badly? Too soon too, I agree.

[ghost of miles]

I want to see it and will post my impressions if I do. But just watching the trailer is a pretty gut-wrenching experience.

[relyles]

My family suffered a loss on flight 93 and every time I see the preview I get a bad feeling. I don't think this is a movie I would ever want to see. That is a time that my family would like to avoid reliving.

Edited April 28, 2006 by relyles

[GregK]

Much too soon

[Quincy]

I read accounts of what happened so I'll stick with the horrors as I imagine how it took place. I don't need a movie version of it.

[Guest Chaney]

LAST IMPRESSIONS

“United 93”

by DAVID DENBY / The New Yorker

Issue of 2006-05-01

Posted 2006-04-24

“No one is going to help us. We’ve got to do it ourselves.” Those plain, unarousing words, spoken by a man ordinary in looks but remarkable in perception and courage, are a turning point in “United 93,” Paul Greengrass’s stunning account of how a group of airline passengers, almost certain of death, decided on the morning of September 11th to fight back against hijackers on a suicide mission. But Greengrass doesn’t build the moment as a turning point in any conventional way. The words of the anonymous passenger, a round-faced man who has been studying the hijackers ever since they made their first moves, are spoken firmly but without emphasis, and no dead air is placed around the statement to give it extra weight. The hijackers have taken over the flight at knifepoint and murdered a passenger in first class, and everyone else, appalled, has gathered at the back of the plane. By this time, both the passengers and the crew understand what is going on. Many of them have spoken by cellphone to friends and relatives, and they know that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have been hit. The hijackers aren’t going to land and hold them hostage; they are going to slam them into another building. The only issue—for the flight controllers and the military people we see at other points in the movie, as well as for the people on board—is what can be done to take control of a situation both terrifying and unprecedented. Greengrass’s movie is tightly wrapped, minutely drawn, and, no matter how frightening, superbly precise. In comparison with past Hollywood treatments of Everyman heroism in time of war, such as Hitchcock’s hammy “Lifeboat,” or more recent spectacles, like “War of the Worlds,” there’s no visual or verbal rhetoric, no swelling awareness of the Menace We All Face. Those movies were guaranteed to raise a lump in our throats. In this retelling of actual events, most of our emotion is centered in the pit of the stomach. The accumulated dread and grief get released when some of the male passengers, shortly after those few words are spoken, rush the hijackers stationed at the front of the plane with the engorged fury of water breaking through a dam.

A fair amount of distaste for this movie has been building in recent weeks. Would the heroic event—which ended when the plane crashed in Pennsylvania, killing everyone aboard—be exploited in some way? And why do we need to take this death trip? But “United 93” is a tremendous experience of fear, bewilderment, and resolution, and, when you replay the movie in your head afterward, you are likely to think that Greengrass made all the right choices. Born in England in 1955, he has directed, among other films, “Bloody Sunday,” a re-creation of the British Army’s massacre of Northern Irish protesters, in 1972; and “The Bourne Supremacy,” a franchise action movie in which a near-silent Matt Damon tears up Europe. What unites all three films is a dynamic use of the camera. It’s handheld and thrust into the tumult, yet somehow—and this is the essence of Greengrass’s art—we see what we need to see.

The movie begins slowly, with the morning prayers of the sweet-faced young men who will become the terrorists; the drowsy routine at Newark airport, where Flight 93, bound for San Francisco, began; the passengers amiably settling into the plane; the puzzlement at the Federal Aviation Administration command center, as first one and then another flight veers off course. When Flight 93 is hijacked, the passengers initially respond with panic, while the flight controllers on the ground, burning through their disbelief, try (without success) to rouse the military. Steadily, the editing becomes quicker, the language grows more terse and peremptory, and we begin to pick up details in a flash, out of a corner of the camera’s eye.

The hijackers kill the pilots, but Greengrass doesn’t show us their deaths; we just see their bodies being dragged across the cockpit, from the point of view of a flight attendant in the middle of the plane. Rejecting standard front-and-center staging, Greengrass works in half-understood fragments. When the passengers revolt, the violence is not an artfully edited fake but a chaotic, flailing scramble, and it’s not performed by charismatic types displaying their prowess. In a story of collective and anonymous heroism, we don’t want Denzel Washington leading the charge or Gene Hackman wrathfully telling the military to get on the stick. Greengrass uses real flight attendants, air controllers, and pilots, and mixes them in with little-known or unknown actors. As an ensemble, the players are stolid, but in a good way—they exhibit a combination of incomprehension and intelligence, befuddlement and alertness, that feels right. They live within the moment without overdefining it.

Flight 93’s departure, scheduled for 8 A.M., was delayed. By the time the plane got off the ground, the attacks on the World Trade Center were only a few minutes away. In the movie, once the flight is aloft Greengrass sticks to real time, and the passing minutes have an almost demonic urgency. This is true existential filmmaking: there is only the next instant, and the one after that, and what are you going to do? Many films whip up tension with cunning and manipulation. As far as possible, this movie plays it straight. A few people made extraordinary use of those tormented minutes, and “United 93” fully honors what was original and spontaneous and brave in their refusal to go quietly.

[GregK]

It may be a very well done movie, as tasteful as they could have made it, but I don't see the point yet. Why now?

[RDK]

I couldn't agree with Denby more (and i can't think of the last time that i did).

I can certainly understand why someone wouldn't want to see this film, especially anyone personally affected by the crash. Honestly, I wasn't sure that i wanted to see it either, and i think that one of the things that makes it "okay," in retrospect, is that the movie is so well-done and honest and respectful... and because of that it's deeply meaningful and moving. If it was melodramatic and cheesy in the least, it would have been disastrous.

Is it coming "too soon?" I honestly don't know, but i don't think so. I think it's all the more powerful for being so fresh in our minds and with the conflicts it triggered still going on. I have to admit, one can get pretty damn cynical working in Hollywood, but i have to give props to the filmmakers for stepping up, taking the risks, and making this film like they did. One can't really compare it to something like Schindler's List, but imagine if Schindler's List was made in 1949 rather than in 1993 - would that have been "too soon" as well?

I won't urge anyone to see this film if they don't want to see it, of course, but i do think that many of you who don't think you want to see it would end up appreciating it far more than you think. I would recommend, though, that anyone interested in experiencing it see it in a theater with other moviegoers and not wait for cable or DVD. I think the film gains a lot from the communal experience as you can feel the tension in the theater, sense the baited breaths, and hear the gasps and the tears. It's really very powerful and moving, and imo not the least bit melodramatic or disrespectful.

[RDK]

It may be a very well done movie, as tasteful as they could have made it, but I don't see the point yet. Why now?

Why not now? Seriously - and as i said i can certainly understand someone not wanting to see this - but how long should one wait? What is the appropriate amount of time? Or would movies such as this, based on tragic, real-life events always be considered exploitative and inappropriate?

[Dan Gould]

Ray makes good points but I am still not prepared to see a dramatization of these events.

I think this movie is going up against some strong gut reactions against seeing these events dramatized - it will be interesting whether word of mouth can overcome that.

[RDK]

You'll all be sorry when RV is the number one film this weekend!

[Christiern]

I hope this is not the number one film, but that would not surprise me. I agree with those who believe that is far too soon--it really smacks of exploitation, even with the obligatory charitable donations.

Besides that, I seriously believe that the action taken by the passengers was not a patriotic attempt to save Washington buildings--these people were trying to save themselves, and we cannot fault them for that, but neither should we bestow sainthood upon them for the sake of perceived patriotism.

[RDK]

Chris -

I'll agree that it's difficult to make and market this film without it seeming exploitative - that's been a concern of Universal's from the very start - but the film itself is not exploitative imo. Maybe that's just a fine semantical line, but i also think it's dependant on the film being "good." If the movie was "bad," then yes, I think it would be perceived as being more exploitative.

Also, whether that was the motivation of the actual passengers or not I do not know, but the movie most certainly does not paint the passengers' actions as a "patriotic attempt to save Washington." If i recall correctly, the passengers (in the film at least) had no idea that the plane was even bound for D.C. Not sure if that fine a point even matters, but the film doesn't come across as patriotic or jingoistic or anything like that. I actually think a lot of people will be most shocked by the depiction of the terrorists. While certainly not sympathetic, they are (imo) depicted as very human.

One of the problems with a film such as this - and i experienced it as well - is that our (lowered?) expectations of what it's going to be like doesn't quite jibe with what's delivered. Everyone that i know who has seen the film has been moved by it and impressed by it - even if they hold the opinion that it shouldn't have been made at this time.

[GregK]

It may be a very well done movie, as tasteful as they could have made it, but I don't see the point yet. Why now?

Why not now? Seriously - and as i said i can certainly understand someone not wanting to see this - but how long should one wait? What is the appropriate amount of time?

I don't know.

[Guest Chaney]

April 28, 2006

Defiance Under Fire: Paul Greengrass's Harrowing 'United 93'

By MANOHLA DARGIS

A PERSUASIVELY narrated, scrupulously tasteful re-creation of the downing of the fourth and final plane hijacked by Islamist terrorists on Sept. 11, "United 93" is the first Hollywood feature film to take on that dreadful day. It won't be the last. (Next up, ready or not: Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center.") Preceded by both the expected bluster and genuine relief that the film is as good as it is — and it is good, in a temple-pounding, sensory-overloading way that can provoke tears and a headache — it was written and directed by the British filmmaker Paul Greengrass, who has crossed the pond to make the feel-bad American movie of the year.

Mr. Greengrass cut his teeth in British television working on a current-affairs program and directing factually grounded films. His breakout film, "Bloody Sunday," released in 2002, recreates a violent clash in 1972 between peaceful Irish protesters and trigger-happy British paratroopers that left more than a dozen marchers dead. Though produced for television, it toured the international film festival circuit and led directly to his next gig, "The Bourne Supremacy," a hyperkinetic Hollywood spy thriller about an amnesiac C.I.A. operative (played by Matt Damon). With jerky hand-held camerawork and nanosecond editing rhythms, Mr. Greengrass ratcheted up the action to Mach 5 and walked away with a canny box-office hit. Thrilling and gloomy in parts, it was the perfect warm-up for this new film.

Without ceremony, credits or introductory music, "United 93" opens with a cluster of Muslim men murmuring prayers in a hotel room. The four are the hijackers later identified by the F.B.I. as Ziad Jarrah (Khalid Abdalla), Saeed al-Ghamdi (Lewis Alsamari), Ahmed al-Haznawi (Omar Berdouni) and Ahmed al-Nami (Jamie Harding). Distinguished by his glasses and heavy black brows that hover over his worried eyes like the silhouette of a flying bird, Jarrah quickly becomes the most important hijacker in Mr. Greengrass's retelling. That's partly because Jarrah will pilot the plane, a photograph of the Capitol building taped to the control yoke, but also because in this recognizably human face we find a screen for whatever emotions we want to project: indecision, fear, regret or something more oblique, unknown.

Much of what happened on the plane remains unknown. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, some 15 minutes after the second plane hit the South Tower a United Airlines flight dispatcher began transmitting alerts to his planes, including United 93, warning pilots to guard against "cockpit intrusion." The message was received by United 93 at 9:24 a.m., three minutes after it had been transmitted. Two minutes later the pilot, Capt. Jason M. Dahl (JJ Johnson), asked for confirmation. Two minutes after that, the hijackers breached the cockpit and gained control of the plane, probably murdering both pilots and a flight attendant. At 10:03 a.m., after passengers tried to break down the cockpit door, United 93 plowed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone onboard.

In its vivid details and especially its narrative pacing, the account of the United 93 hijacking in the 9/11 report reads like a nail-biter, something cooked up by Sebastian Junger. Drawing on different sources, including the report and family members, Mr. Greengrass follows the same trajectory as the report, with most of the screen time devoted to the period between takeoff and the excruciating moments before the plane crashed. The film carries the standard caution that it is "a creative work based on fact," yet Mr. Greengrass's use of nonfiction tropes, like the jagged camerawork and the rushed, overlapping shards of naturalistic dialogue, invests his storytelling with a visceral, combat-zone verisimilitude. And yet at the same time, beat for beat, the whole thing plays out very much according to the Hollywood playbook.

"United 93" not only gives us what happened inside the doomed plane: it also shows us the panic and chaos that seized those tracking air traffic that morning. Perhaps Mr. Greengrass felt it would be unbearably claustrophobic to stay inside the cabin for the 35 minutes between the moments when the hijackers seized and crashed the plane. Or perhaps because it's difficult to build and sustain narrative tension inside a single, confined set (as even Hitchcock proved), or perhaps because he just wanted to give us a larger view of that day, the filmmaker employs a narrative strategy as old as the movies themselves. He tells the story of "United 93" through cross-cutting, restlessly and with increasing rapidity moving back and forth between the plane and the F.A.A. and military personnel who are trying to understand what's happening.

The film's early, quiet scenes of these men and women preparing for another day of work — the co-pilot walking around the plane for a preflight check, air-traffic controllers exchanging technical small talk — are especially effective, since they underscore that before all these people became either heroes or, in the case of the F.A.A., heavies, they were men and women, people, not abstractions.

The problem is that it isn't the ordinariness of the passengers and the crew that most of us remember. What we remember are the accounts of their heroism and Todd Beamer's famous "Let's roll," here movingly uttered by the actor David Alan Basche almost as an aside, and their murder. And this is where writing about "United 93," as a movie, as an entertainment, becomes difficult.

Mr. Greengrass has worked hard to honor the victims, as has the studio releasing the film. The whole production has arrived in a hush of solemnity; the notes given to the press even include biographies of the crew and passengers, some by family members. But because Mr. Greengrass treats everyone onboard as equals (no one is a star, on screen or off), and because he throws us into the story without telling us who they are, they never become individuated. They are the guy in the baseball cap, the weeping woman, the man bleeding to death on the floor. More than anything, they are the instruments of the narrative's inexorable momentum, helping to push the story forward with their confused whispers, desperate plans and, finally, stunningly bold action.

Working with the talented cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, who has brought a gritty neo-realist touch to a number of Ken Loach's films, and a trio of crack editors (Clare Douglas, Christopher Rouse and Richard Pearson), Mr. Greengrass puts us in the middle of the fast-escalating mayhem amid a flurry of smash edits, raging voices and pooling blood.

As the camera whips from one location to the next, a few faces come sharply into focus, in particular that of Ben Sliney, the operations manager who was actually running the F.A.A. command center the morning of Sept. 11. Mr. Sliney is one of nine F.A.A. and military personnel who play themselves; you only have to hear Maj. James Fox, from the Northeast Air Defense Sector, ask where the president and vice president are to understand why.

"United 93" is a sober reminder of the breakdown in leadership on the morning of Sept. 11. Unlike Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," the film doesn't get into the whereabouts of the president that day, or why Osama bin Laden ordered the attack; its focus is purposely narrow. But that narrow focus, along with the lack of fully realized characters, and the absence of any historical or political context, raises the question of why, notwithstanding the usual (if shaky) commercial imperative, this particular movie was made. To jolt us out of complacency? Remind us of those who died? Unite us, as even the film's title seems to urge? Entertain us?

To be honest, I haven't a clue. I didn't need a studio movie to remind me of the humanity of the thousands who were murdered that day or the thousands who have died in the wars waged in their name. That's one reason why the arguments about whether it's too soon for a film about the attack rings hollow and seriously off the point.

Sept. 11 has shaped our political discourse and even infiltrated our popular culture, though as usual Hollywood has been awfully late to that table. Yet five years after the fact and all the books, newspaper and magazine articles, committees and scandals later, I think we need something more from our film artists than another thrill ride and an emotional pummeling. "United 93" inspires pity and terror, no doubt. But catharsis? I'm still waiting for that.

"United 93" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). The film has graphic bloody violence and includes real video images of the planes hitting the twin towers.

United 93

Written and directed by Paul Greengrass; director of photography, Barry Ackroyd; edited by Clare Douglas, Christopher Rouse and Richard Pearson; music by John Powell; production designer, Dominic Watkins; produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lloyd Levin and Mr. Greengrass; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 115 minutes.

WITH: As the Flight 93 Crew: JJ Johnson (Capt. Jason M. Dahl), Gary Commock (First Officer LeRoy Homer), Polly Adams (Deborah Welsh), Opal Alladin (CeeCee Lyles), Starla Benford (Wanda Anita Green), Trish Gates (Sandra Bradshaw) and Lorraine G. Bay (Nancy McDoniel). As the Flight 93 Passengers: David Alan Basche (Todd Beamer), Richard Bekins (William Joseph Cashman ), Jane Folger (Susan Blommaert), Ray Charleson (Joseph DeLuca), Christian Clemenson (Thomas E. Burnett Jr.) and Liza Colon-Zayas (Waleska Martinez). As the Flight 93 Hijackers: Khalid Abdalla (Ziad Jarrah), Lewis Alsamari (Saeed al-Ghamdi), Omar Berdouni (Ahmed al-Haznawi) and Jamie Harding (Ahmed al-Nami). At the Herndon, Va., control center: Ben Sliney (as himself). At Northeast Air Defense Sector: Maj. James Fox (as himself).

[Dan Gould]

Besides that, I seriously believe that the action taken by the passengers was not a patriotic attempt to save Washington buildings--these people were trying to save themselves, and we cannot fault them for that, but neither should we bestow sainthood upon them for the sake of perceived patriotism.

It was undoubtedly a patriotic attempt to prevent a fourth terrorist act - they may not have known the target but they knew the outcome. That's why they acted, and it wasn't a purely self-centered act to save their own lives but also to save lives they knew were at stake somewhere on the ground. Yes, they probably had some blind hope they could land the plane but the odds of that were a 1 million to 1. The odds of overpowering the hijackers were about 40 to 4, a damn sight better.

Nobody is bestowing sainthood. But they should be recognized for the way in which they died and why.

Edited April 29, 2006 by Dan Gould

[chris olivarez]

I'll pass.

[Alexander]

I haven't seen it yet, but I will. I'm curious to see how it's carried off and how well it stands up as a piece of filmmaking. I certainly don't think it's too soon, especially for this kind of film (ie: one that is done with taste). I'm also interested by some of the reviews I've read that talk about the documentary look and feel of the film. I have a feeling that once people get over the shock of the subject matter, they will be swept up in the story...

[Guy Berger]

I don't think I'll be seeing this.

Guy

[jlhoots]

We're not going either.

Sophie Scholl, about events over 60 years ago, was still a very emotional experience (well made film BTW), but this one might just be too much, too soon.

[Rooster_Ties]

On the fence. Hadn't planned on going, but reading most of the press coverage, I'm somewhat tempted. Probably not for a month or two, though.

[Jazzmoose]

I have no plans to see this. I really don't see much point in making this movie now other than exploitation. It's not like people have forgotten what happened.