United 93 (2006)

This post contains spoilers to the nth degree.

I wasn't interested in United 93 initially. Aside from some made-for-TV stuff, it's the first real picture dealing with the 9/11 attacks, and I'm sure plenty more will follow. The first one is usually the quick-and-dirty grab, so I couldn't care less about it. Then, something funny happened. Over at Rotten Tomatoes, the day it opened, it was getting some incredible marks, the kind usually reserved for end-of-the-year Oscar fodder. More than curious, I was excited for it. It took me nearly a week, but I finally got around to seeing it, and I'll say this; they were right.

I remember that day pretty well. I woke up, took care of my daily hygiene, and having nothing else to do, I sat down at my PC in the morning to play Black and White for a few hours. I had no TV in that room, which immersed me in the game pretty well. After I finished, it was mid-morning and I got up, I stretched, I went to the bathroom, I turned on the TV, I probably grabbed a snack. I say I only turned on the TV, because I just clicked it on and left the room to continue whatever I was doing. As I walked by, I saw some kind of news bulletin, kind of funny because the channels I'd usually watched wouldn't show any kind of news. So, it happened. The towers came down, there was a ton of confusion as to what happened. I remember being pretty numb about it. It was more symbolic than anything. Sure, it was a tragedy and all, but I think I was more concerned with DVD and video game shipments being interrupted than anything. I know, I sound like a heartless bastard, and I can assure you I am.

United 93 helps to put a face to the horrors that occurred, to fill in some of the blanks, and to tell what happened that day. It's well-written and very well-directed by Paul Greengrass. You can really tell that this was a labor, not necessarily of love, but one that was close to the hearts of those involved.

I have to wonder if this film were about something else, or if I didn't live in America, or wasn't as close to all of it, if the film would have been as effective. Truth be told, I don't know. I don't have the power to separate the film from the events portrayed, and because so much of cinema is based upon the viewer and what he brings to the film, I wouldn't want to try.

It starts out fairly slow. It shows the terrorists getting ready for their mission, the passengers hanging around, waiting for their flight, the pilots, controllers and flight attendants going about their jobs as usual. Obviously, we know what will happen, and in some morbid way, it makes the early section of the film somewhat boring. It's like Hitchcock once said about suspense; if you know a bomb is under the table, it makes you even more upset that the people there are oblivious and talking about something as pointless as baseball. You watch these people making their final preparations, gabbing on cellphones about meaningless things, going about their business. You know most of them are about to die, so you start to wonder why we're even seeing these stupid details at all. Why should they bother doing these things, and why should we bother watching? It goes to show you how fragile a human life is, how quickly it can be ended. I'm reminded of one of my favorite quotes on mortality from Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, "Hell of a thing, killin' a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." Also, the world of international flight is usually pretty mundane. There's a lot of boring routine to go through, small talk to make, time to kill. Even though we know what's coming, because we've entered this realm of boring mundanity, it makes everything that occurs more shocking and brutal.

The film ramps up, and we see how unexpected the attacks really were. It starts with a single air traffic controller noticing that a single flight hasn't responded. It takes a commercial airplane flying into a skyscraper for people to actually begin to take the threat seriously, and by then, there's almost nothing left they can do. It gives you a helpless feeling, because the people on the ground can't really do anything, and the people in the air are either unable to act, or don't know anything is wrong.

The film is confined to the airplane, United 93, and various control rooms monitoring the events. I've seen the same news footage of the second plane hitting the tower on TV and online dozens, maybe hundreds of times. But, when they insert this footage into this film, all the hectic work of trying to figure out what's happening and how to stop it comes to a screeching halt. A deafening silence as the building explodes. In the context of the film, it gave me chills.

The moment the attack starts on the flight, it's nearly unwatchable. Things were suspenseful, but still rather calm. All of a sudden, the hijackers jump up and go to work; the youngest-looking one at the back of the plane begins to stab the man sitting in front of him. It's pure chaos, and even though I've "seen it all", I was compelled to look away. In all honesty, it's extremely hard to handle. The rest of the film is on this same level, as we watch people saying their farewells, nearly helpless, knowing they're about to die. It's really just gut-wrenching. All this makes it seem all the more heroic when the passengers eventually realize what is going on and make an effort to foil the hijackers' plans. These are just ordinary people, more-average-than-average humans who decided to take action when they saw it was up to them.

There's a scene at the end of the film, before the passengers make their last stand. They are saying the Holy prayer in English, the camera shows them one by one, searching for faith. Then, it's cross-cutted with the hijackers doing the same thing, praying to their God for strength. It's a strange moment, but very powerful. If one believes, then it becomes a battle of deities; whose God is more powerful, or even non-existent? Due to my beliefs, and the fact that I don't want to cause any unnecessary grief in something as frivolous as a Movie Blog, I won't preach my own ideals. But, the feeling that I get from the film is that faith exists in the heart of whomever believes. Say a man is trapped in a cave for weeks, praying to his God for the strength to carry on, and miraculously, he survives. This isn't proof of any higher power, but, I think, that through his own faith, he was able to find the strength within himself to survive. Individual strength is one of the most powerful things in the world.

One thing I think the film does a great job of showing is how slow information really travels, despite our obsession with technology. I'm reminded of my experience that morning; it was hours before we even know why the towers fell, that jets were flown into them. It was even longer, even days before the public learned of al-Queda and actually WHY it happened in the first place. I'm not saying technology is bad, because it obviously manages to protect us and help us every single day, but even in this jungle of wire and circuit board, information can take far too long to reach where it needs to be.

The film is very objective, which I am happy with, because I'd rather not have to think much about the politics and endless debating that it could come with. The film doesn't seem to have a political agenda. Of course, through watching it, we're forced to wonder about the responsibility of the events. Who is to blame? Is the entire Arab world to blame? Of course not. Is our government to blame for not protecting us? Not necessarily. The way I see it, if somebody wants to cause a catastrophe, they will, no matter how well-protected we are. Sure, we've cracked down on airport security since 9/11, but that won't last forever, and we have to keep in mind, that the next terrorist act (if any) that comes our way will probably not be via the airline industry. Our country is so large, and we have so many people and land that it's impossible for any kind of government to keep all of us safe from any potential harm. So, are Americans to blame, for somehow provoking this attack? I doubt it. It's my personal philosophy that every man is responsible for his own actions. It's important to keep in mind that 9/11 was the work of a small group of people who wishes to punish us for what they perceived as living blasphemously. If the film has shown us one thing, it's that this act was carried out by a group of people with immense hatred in their hearts. I don't think they're representative of any kind of religious group or any other kind, but simply a number of people, like I said, with immense hatred in their hearts.

The film ends perfectly. They may not have saved themselves, but the passengers have prevents an even worse catastrophe. The camera is in the cockpit, and we get a first-person view as the plane spirals down into the Pennsylvania farmland. There is no crash, no explosion. That would be in pretty poor taste. Instead, a fade to white, and pure silence. A few screens of text display a few final bits of information, and dedicate the film to those who lost their lives on September 11. Even though the audience I was there with was pretty quiet, there was utter silence in the theater at that moment.