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The Intersection of Life and...Art?
With United 93 , writer/director Paul Greengrass has brought the allusion full circle, given us feature film as reality, and in doing so, has made a movie of undeniable power and emotional impact. It's certainly hard not to be shaken by the dramatic reenactment of the horrible realization that the first plane was no fluke, the grief that comes from knowing beforehand how tragically the story ends, or the visceral punch of the devastatingly chaotic climax. The unfolding story aboard flight 93, and the accompanying backdrop of confusion that slowly evolved into collective national distress, compels us from beginning to end, immersing us initially in the mundane details of everyday life tinged with the melancholy awareness that this was not just another day, finally in a moment of courageous heroism that seems near Herculean in its very simplicity.
Even so, the film occasionally missteps. The musical score is used so sparingly that its occasional emergence was a bit jarring, prompting me to wonder if the film would not have been better with no score at all. And the repetition of various elements, particularly the relaying of orders up and down the chain of command-often between people in the same room-at NORAD, frequently began to have an effect opposite to that which was intended. Both elements pulled me out of the immediate and all but forced me to treat the film as film rather than merely giving in to its otherwise devastating emotional potential. Regardless, I couldn't help but be affected by it emotionally even as I bristled at some of its more overt manipulations or forced connections (a montage of passengers saying the Lord's Prayer intercut with the Muslims saying their own prayer has some troubling implications beyond Greengrass' presumed intent). The question of whether or not United 93 is too soon will be hotly debated for years to come, but it is undoubtedly a film of great power.whether or not that is enough to motivate viewers to revisit the painful memories it evokes will have to be up to each individual.
©2006 Ed Owens |
The tragic events of September 11 th , 2001 will forever be summed up for me in a single indelible image, one captured by an amateur videographer on the streets far below the real ground zero many stories above: a gaping passerby looking up in horror as a fast-moving passenger plane flies overhead and into the second building. A particularly surreal image that managed to stand out even amidst a sea of surreal images, everything about it seemed like something straight out of a Bay/Bruckheimer film, even prompting one commentator to explicitly liken the events to a movie-reality as feature film.
But is United 93 any good? Is its emotional power the result of skillful filmmaking or the natural manifestation of fresh wounds reopened? Is the distinction important, or even necessary? Ultimately, such a conversation can't help but feel somewhat crass and shallow, as if any criticism of the film is an inherent diminution of our own collective memory and history. The cast and crew tackle the difficult task of filming the unfilmable with an abundance of grace and tact, eschewing the very style that initial real-life footage called to the minds of myself and others in favor of a verite style that feels both real and immediate. Greengrass, for the most part, allows the events and people to speak for themselves (several of the air traffic controllers are played by the actual controllers that were in the various centers on 9/11), depoliticizing material that many would argue has become overly politicized in the intervening years.