United 93

It's a rare kind of film that truly grabs you. Not just grabs you, but makes you completely forget you are watching a filmed re enactment. Not almost forget, completely. United 93 is the first film that had me completely lost in its illusion from the word go in a very long time. Directed in an almost documentary style by Paul Greengrass, the film makes so many right decisions it's almost scary that any director could pull it off seemingly so effortlessly. Here is a movie that could have gone wrong in so many ways. It could have played up the melodrama. It could have made the characters to be larger than life. It could have hit us over the head with symbolism and other cheap tactics. The movie avoids all of these pitfalls, and just gives us a straight up blow by blow of the tragic events of September 11th. For the nearly two hours the film runs, we are transported back in time to almost five years ago, and we are there watching history unfold once again.

The largest and perhaps smartest decision Greengrass made is in the casting. You won't find a single recognizable face on the doomed flight. Well, okay, I spotted one, but that's only because I'm a total film geek. His decision to fill his movie entirely with mainly unknown actors adds to the realism. This is not a disaster movie where an all-star cast struggle to survive through amazing odds. If the passengers on the plane had been played by a large group of famous faces, the film would have fallen flat on its face, I think. We wouldn't be watching the passengers of United 93, we'd be watching a Hollywood retelling of the story. Greengrass fills his movie with average everyday people who look like they walked in off the street, but fortunately, have the acting talent to convince us that they are who they're pretending to be. Their emotions are completely real, and there is never a single false, condescending, or manipulative moment. This in itself is a minor miracle, and it carries all the way through it.

But perhaps the best thing that United 93 pulls off is the sheer randomness and insanity that must have happened on that day. Switching back and forth between the flight, and those on the ground trying to track all the various planes suddenly going off course and dropping contact, the film wisely does not attempt to explain what's going on. Of course, it doesn't need to, but I admired that the movie so perfectly and accurately captures the chaos. No mention of terrorists is made on the ground. They don't know what caused the planes to crash into the World Trade Center, and wouldn't know for some time until after this movie ends. The movie so perfectly manages to capture the emotion, feelings, and fear of those few hours when America fell into almost complete and incomprehensible anarchy that it's almost eerie. Those moments felt almost like a dream. It couldn't be happening, how could it be? The film goes from a state of serene every day to all out panic so effortlessly and so discreetly, and I've never seen it handled in a better or more realistic way.

So, now come the two difficult questions - How are those responsible for the attacks portrayed in this film, and should you see it? Let me tackle the first one by saying that the terrorists who hold the plane hostage during the later half of the film are kept at an appropriate distance. We don't know anything about their lives before this day, and the movie does not try to humanize or demonize them. The movie is focused only on the scant few hours that this event took place. All we get to see is how they acted during those hours before the plane hit the ground. It's not just the terrorists, but everyone is kept at a distance. We don't get to know the background stories of the passengers, the terrorists, or the flight crew, only what we hear in their conversations with each other or over the phone. This is not a dramatization of the day, it is a window into the past. There are no doomed lovers, there are no people who strike up a friendship while waiting for the plane to board and we follow them as they watch the events unfold, there are no heroes, there are no villains. The movie doesn't try to humanize those responsible for the event by giving us an inside look in their personal lives. The closest thing we get is the head of the operation saying "I love you" in his native language into a cell phone before he boards the plane. To whom he is saying this, we never find out, because the point of the film is not to let us know what was going through the minds of those responsible.

This brings us to the most important question of all - should you see it? This is something that has been hotly debated, and will probably continue to be while its playing in theaters and even when it comes out on DVD. Some believe it's too soon, some think it's making money off a national tragedy, and some think it's just in plain bad taste. This is a tricky question to answer. I personally viewed it as an incredible piece of filmmaking, and quite possibly the most real and unflinchingly honest recreation of an actual event that I can think of. Quite frankly, I think this movie belongs in a time capsule, and should be remembered and watched for many years to come. I can understand why some may think that it is too soon, or why they would not want to watch it for personal reasons, but I really do hope people do watch it. It's not just an important movie, I think it is cinematic art. It leaves you enraptured, and full of so many emotions by the time that it's over that you may not know what to think or feel. You may even feel physically exhausted. If anything, United 93 is a pure testament to the power that filmmaking can have over a viewer.

If there is any fault I can find with this film, it's a very minor one. I would have preferred that there was no film score during the movie. Yes, Greengrass knows when to use music and when not to. And the scenes that do feature a background music score is subtle and tasteful. But still, does a story like this really need a score to heighten the mood or emotion of a scene? After all, that's what film scores are for, and a story like this does not need any help. Aside from this very tiny complaint, I can truly think of no other way this movie goes wrong in its depiction. I don't think I need to say that United 93 is the best film of the year so far by a long shot. All I need to say is that I hope you give this film the chance it deserves.

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