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DVD United 93 (Widescreen Edition)
One of the most shocking events in modern American history gets a skilled and respectful treatment in United 93. The movie begins by following the four terrorists who hijacked the plane that never reached its target on 9/11/2001, tracking them as they enter the airport and wait for their flight, surrounded by the people who will die from their actions. From there, it cuts to and fro among air traffic controllers and the military as, gradually, it becomes clear that planes are being hijacked and crashed into buildings. As the focus turns to the captive United Flight 93, the passengers discover, due to cell phone connections with family, that they're on a suicide mission and--almost paralyzed by stress and anxiety--decide to fight back. Most movies create tension by implying what might happen, but with United 93 the audience knows exactly what happened: Every person on that plane died. As a result, the movie is more relentlessly gut-wrenching than suspenseful (though the dawning realization of the air traffic controllers has an effective creeping dread). But writer/director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy) manages to keep the scale of the events human; there are no glamorous heroics, only terrifying confusion and desperate, hopeless bravery. One can only hope the movie brings some peace to the families of the passengers, as United 93 is the cinematic equivalent of a war memorial, commemorating lives lost in a moment of horrible, harrowing conflict. --Bret Fetzer
In essence, this is a real-time war movie with minimal editorializing* and no detectable post-modern storytelling gimmicks. The movie that comes closest to it in spirit (to my mind) is "Black Hawk Down". Only the actions of adversaries are portrayed; motives are not explained. The movie's main objective is to try to answer: "What happened aboard the plane?"
(*The only editorializing I could discern was the inclusion of a male character with a German-like accent urging the other passengers of 93 to just follow the hijackers' instructions.)
The DVD comes with insightful commentary by the director, particulary on the nature of organizational 'systems' and the snags in their attempts to communicate with each other expediently and process what is going on.
Those aboard United 93, he notes, were among the first people forced to answer the question, "What do we do now?" In a striking remark that draws a parallel between the battle for the cockpit of United 93 and the political maneuvering for "the world's controls" today, the director, in effect, asks, "What do we do now?"
Fighting to Live
I was working at a National Emergency Coordination Center on the morning of September 11th and had been on duty for an hour or two when news came that a "light plane" had hit the World Trade Center. As a low level technician, whose responsibilities included the main conference AV equipment, we turned on the giant screen in the main building and watched the smoke coming out of the tower on the 15 x 15 foot screen. At that moment, before the second plane hit and before anyone knew what was coming, it was all unbelievable and surreal. Who could have fathomed that men would use passenger planes to destroy so many innocent civilians? Who could have conceived what men were so willing to kill for?
I watched this movie on DVD. While watching the film, I had to stop and take breaks to gather my thoughts and break the stress, even before any of the "violence" or "action" began in the film. Watching the control centers' scrambling with the unknown and unthinkable was too much like real life. I can sympathize with these men and women working in confusion. It's easy to look back with 20/20 hindsight and say, "They should have known." But on that day, with nothing ever happening like this before in history, you have to understand - most of us had no idea. This event was not even a horrific scenario that most of us had ever dreamt of as an option. It was ludacris. A common reaction watching this film is probably viewers like me wanting to yell back in time, "It's for real."
"Art is the signature of civilizations." - Beverly Sills. "The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited." - William Saroyan. "Art is the triumph over chaos." - John Cheever. This film is a work of art. Hopefully, this film will bring more humane responses to the insane rationales men think up to hurt and kill one another.
There is a scene in the movie "Sunshine," staring Ralph Fiennes, where 1500 men in a concentration camp watch and do nothing as one of the prisoners is beaten, hung from a tree naked, then very slowly frozen to death with water from a garden hose. One of the prisoners is later asked, "Why did you do nothing when there were only 14 guards?"
I admire the passengers on flight United 93 who chose to fight, but who did NOT choose to be martyrs. They saw fellow passengers dying around them. They reasonably could see the hijackers were likely going to crash the plane into a building and take more lives. My guess is that if there would have been ANY other way to prevent the imminent harm, they would not have given up their lives. But when faced with the choices they had, they took the actions that might preserve their own life and almost assuredly would save many more lives. They did not want to harm or kill themselves in pursuit of a cause. They were FIGHTING TO LIVE, knowing their choice may lead to their deaths. And to fail to understand that distinction is to not give sufficient honor to their honorable choices and deaths.
Fitting Memorial and Compelling Docudrama.
I put off seeing "United 93" for a long time, thinking it might be either sensational or self-pitying. But when I finally did sit down to watch this movie, I found it thoughtful and absorbing. British filmmaker Paul Greenberg wrote and directed "United 93" in a docudrama style that hasn't been employed this successfully in decades. He populated the film with real pilots, real flight attendants, real air traffic controllers, and real military professionals, some of them also actors, who lend authenticity to the recreations. The scenes in the air traffic control centers were filmed in real time, as the participants and actors reenacted the morning of September 11, 2001. Ben Sliney, who was in charge at the National Air Traffic Command Center that day, reprises his own role compellingly. The result is an extraordinary film that is at once riveting drama and an important contribution to the continually unfolding aftermath of 9/11.
"United 93" recreates 1 hour and 51 minutes of the morning of September 11, 2001, much of it in real time -though the beginning of the film seems compressed, as passengers and flight crew arrive at the airport and board the plane. The action shifts between United Airlines Flight 93, the National Air Traffic Command Center in Herndon, VA, the air traffic control towers in Boston, New York, and Cleveland, and the Northeast Air Defense Center (NORAD) in Rome, New York. The first hour gives us an inside look at air traffic and military professionals as they struggle to understand what is going on and implement some sort of response. The film demonstrates an acute awareness of the systems on which our modern world depend and the fragility that became apparent when a group of determined individuals decided to assault our modernity.
No one knows precisely what went on on United Flight 93. Paul Greenberg assumed the delicate job of creating "a believable truth" for an event that is deeply steeped in politics and mythology. Greenberg was up to the task, and "United 93" could not be better. Sensitive without melodrama, suspenseful instead of sensational, reflective but not passive, "United 93" fulfills the need to understand and memorialize the events of September 11, 2001, for the families of the deceased, for Americans of all political stripes, and for a culture that still struggles to put these events in context and to decipher their implications. That's a tall order, and I could not praise "United 93" more highly for delivering on it.
The DVD (Universal 2006 single disc): In "United 93: The Families and the Film" (1 hour), some families of passengers who perished on United 93 talk about their loved ones and meet the actors who play their family members in the movie. "Memorial Pages" (text) are a list of the 30 passengers and crew who died on United Flight 93 with a bio of each. "Twin Towers" (2 min) is a promotion of a short documentary about 2 brothers, one policeman and one firefighter, who responded to the World Trade Center on 9/11. The audio commentary by Paul Greenberg is thoughtful and worthwhile, especially the first half. The second half is a bit repetitive. He talks about the film's structure, what he left out and why, technical challenges, and comments a great deal on the film's ideas. He unfortunately doesn't say which parts of the action on board Flight 93 is fact and what was extrapolated. Subtitles for the film are available in English SDH, French, Spanish. Dubbing is available in French, Spanish. DVS is available for the visually impaired.
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