A work of remarkable clarity about a terrible day

Director Paul Greengrass began as a documentary journalist-filmmaker with a political bent and showed himself an excellent maker of the pseudo-documentary in his 2002 Bloody Sunday, about a shocking event in Northern Ireland. He then used his energetic camera to liven up The Bourne Supremacy. His political awareness is evident in United 93 in the lack of emotionalism or bias. We see that the commercial flight direction and military air authorities could not get authorization from above to bring down the hijacked planes even after the demolition of the World Trade Center, but this appears more as a system failure than as an indictment of the government’s executive branch or anyone else. We observe people on the ground doing their professional best under extraordinary conditions. And we observe an ordinary flight, with the usual chitchat, until all hell breaks loose and terror strikes.

This real-feeling, superbly edited film is in contrast to the empty grandiosity of Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center. United 93 illustrates the principle that a large budget is not even the best way to achieve a vérité effect. On the scene reporters don’t have expensive equipment. A look at the cast will show you this film has actual military officers and air traffic controllers playing themselves, most notably including Ben Sliney, who started his job as the FAA's top controller on the morning of Sept. 11; and the passengers and the hijackers on the aircraft are played by people who are unknown to us, as the actual people in that place on that day were.

The budget allowed the film to show officials trying to cope with events and the action on a single plane, so that is what they did. But this gives us the best overview of the events. For Greengrass, economic necessity is also artistic logic. Surely the essence of September 11th is that four coordinated plane hijackings occurred, and that as far as we can tell only one plane’s passengers staged a revolt. United 93 is the only one of the four hijackings on that day we have any orchestrated record of, and it is the only one where we know of heroism among the victims – though some of the specifics of the latter as shown in the film are conjectural. Here, we see how the situation was grasped slowly by air traffic and military personnel, and later by the passengers on the flight. Greengrass deserves highest praise for conveying a sense of immediacy and authenticity on both levels.

Some day someone may have the courage and imagination to make a film from the point of view of the perpetrators, as Marco Bellocchio has described the seizing and murder of Aldo Moro in Italy from the point of view of the kidnappers in Good Morning, Night. Such an exercise in point of view can only lead to challenges and stimulation for the viewer. But that is not what we get here. The film maintains a certain neutral distance from everybody.

Though United 93 begins with the hijackers of this plane preparing to go, the image we get of them is convincing but limited. They seem uncoordinated, and since theirs is the plane of the four that didn’t find its destination, that makes sense. They are dealt with neutrally. They’re neither humanized nor demonized. We simply see their determination and fear. They’re on the edge of hysteria and praying all the time. Was that true? At least it is the simplest, most logical way to portray them.

The rapid movement of the handheld camera is effective in conveying the excitement and disorder of the moment – up to a point. The film is more effective at conveying the action at military command headquarters and multiple air traffic control rooms than at the enormously challenging task of conveying the situation on the plane. There’s terrific suspense there, as we see the plane’s takeoff being routinely delayed and the hijackers holding off for a long time before going into action. We’re about an hour into the film before the actual hijacking begins on board Flight 93, but the action on the ground among the flight coordinators, who’ve seen the films of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon being hit, has keyed us up to a fever pitch. This is part of what I meant by “superbly edited.” The cutting also has a fine, rapid rhythm that always feels exactly right.

When things become really chaotic and terrifying on board the plane, this is where the filmmakers themselves lose a little bit too much control. Not being able to see anybody clearly or follow what’s going on may fit the event, but a director has a duty to his audience to clarify some things. Those who’ve chosen United 93 for their lists of the year’s best have every right to do so, but they may have gone a bit overboard out of an overwhelming sense of gratitude that anyone could have the sangfroid and clarity to make the unthinkable bearable and watchable; that such an emotionally fraught recent event could have been conveyed in such a balanced way. This is subject matter it’s almost impossible for any American to judge objectively, but my sense is that although this is a beautifully made movie, it falls short of being a great or inspiring one, and hence it deserves honorable mention, but not quite a listing among the year’s top ten.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.