United 93 (2006)
Thursday, September 7th, 2006
Written & Directed by: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Christian Clemenson, Ben Sliney, Tobin Miller, James Fox, Trish Gates, Polly Adams, Cheyenne Jackson, David Alan Basche, Richard Bekins, Khalid Abdalla, Lewis Alsamari, Omar Berdouni, Jamie Harding
Runtime: 111 min.
Rating: R
Trailer
The story of what occurred on the fourth hijacked plane has now been captured on film three different times. Two of those films, A&E’s Flight 93 and the Discovery Channel’s The Flight that Fought Back, were made-for-television movies that concentrated on the heroism and the patriotism of the passengers and their doomed flight. With United 93, director Paul Greengrass takes the more objective approach in telling the story. Filmed in the same cinema verite style that Greengrass utilizes for all of his films (notably Bloody Sunday and The Bourne Supremacy) the heroism, shock, confusion and utter horror of what occurred on the flight is brought to the screen in a film that is just as poignant and heartbreaking as it is masterfully efficient. The result is a film that is easily one of the best of 2006 and a sure bet for an Academy Award nomination.
United 93 opens at dawn with one of the hijackers quietly reciting a prayer from the Koran as the others ready themselves for the day ahead. The only foreshadowing of what is to come is through a single shot of one of the hijackers slipping a small blade under his belt. The suspense and dread is palatable only because we know what will eventually happen, and not from any artificial mechanisms other directors of the material surely would have employed.
There are no individual characterizations made of the passengers, only rough outlines capturing the typical, everyday chatter made between passengers and flight attendants. What we get is a film unlike the standard “based on a true story” event film we’re used to seeing (the recent World Trade Center being one of them) but a film that treats the passengers and the terrorists as nothing more than constructs. They are people with no history or obvious characteristics to distinguish them other than their appearance and slight mannerisms, and in that sense, the audience is able to share in the confusion and chaos felt on 9/11.
The only true “character” is Ben Sliney (playing himself) as the director of the FAA National Flight Center, who frantically tries to make sense of the chaos, quickly relaying information back between regional traffic control centers and military command centers. He is ultimately the man responsible for shutting down all inbound and outbound flights within the United States. Somehow, Greengrass is able to piece together the frantic dialogue and kinetic energy into an amazing piece of docudrama that never rings false, and more importantly, he captures the action in a way that always allows the audience to make sense of what is going on.
Technically speaking, United 93 is a masterpiece of editing, camerawork, and storytelling efficiency that is rarely seen. It does not employ flashbacks, voiceover narration, bravado grandstanding or cheap sentimentality. Instead, it carefully and methodically cuts back and forth between several different locations, illuminating the confusion and lack of communication with a system that is deeply flawed. When military command finally authorizes fighter jets to scramble over Manhattan, the confusion results in jets deployed unarmed and over the Atlantic, and not over the Manhattan skyline.
The final twenty minutes - when the passengers finally realise their plane is part of suicide mission - is a gut wrenching experience that captures the desperation of the passengers’ realization that they must act if they are to have a chance at landing the plane. Yet their action is never exploited for anything more than what it was: A desperate attempt to stay alive. United 93 makes the argument that the passengers weren’t motivated simply because they saw the fight as good vs. evil, as the Bush administration would have you believe, nor because they wanted to defend their homeland, but because of their primal overriding desire to survive at any cost.
Greengrass does not elevate the passengers to that of mythic heroes, instead he shows the horror, desperation, and inevitable tragedy with the same unwavering, objective camera, leaving the act to speak for itself. Unlike The Passion of the Christ’s giddiness over its stylized violence, United 93 is careful to observe the story without a grandiose artifice overriding it. There are no slow motion theatrics, clichéd music cues, or rah-rah speeches. Instead, the simple act of prayer in the final minutes before the crash is a lot more emotionally devastating.
Unflinching, heart wrenching and viscerally powerful, United 93 is not only a re-creation of what happened aboard the plane and on the ground, but an expertly made and beautifully orchestrated film of the highest quality. The film immerses the viewer in the confusion, anger, and fear of that day without overly sentimentalizing or cheapening the outcome. When the screen finally goes black at the end, shaking off the emotional wallop is difficult. A lingering feeling of dread, anger, and unimaginable sadness hits incredibly hard, yet I cannot think of a more fitting memorial for that awful day.
Richard X
© Cinephile Magazine, 2006
