I went to see Lucky Number Slevin yesterday (not great, not bad), and one of the trailers before the film was for United 93. This is writer-director Paul Greengrass' telling of the fourth hijacked flight on September 11, 2001, the one taken back by its passengers before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field. Not surprisingly, there is a fair amount of uproar surrounding this project. For his part Greengrass claims the unanimous support of the families of Flight 93, without whose backing and consult he says he wouldn't have gone ahead with the film. Nevertheless, not everyone is overwhelmed by enthusiasm for the project. There have been reports of audiences in LA shouting at the screen, "TOO SOON!", of overcome New Yorkers leaving the theater in tears during the trailer, which features CNN footage of the second plane just before it slammed into the South Tower. At the risk of trafficking in understatement, this is clearly a subject that many Americans are not yet comfortable reliving.And this isn't the first time Greengrass, an Englishman, has dealt with sensitive material. His 2002 Bloody Sunday is a remarkably effective, balanced telling of the 1972 massacre by British troops of protesters in Derry, Northern Ireland.* He manages to interweave documentary-grade verisimilitude with personal portraits of the day's victims, orchestrators, and those who tried in vain to stop the events already in motion. The film ends with an arresting sequence showing the galvanizing effect the unwarranted killings had for local IRA recruitment.
He has similarly fertile soil to work with in United 93, the opportunity to craft a statement about how an act of war can simultaneously bring a nation together and potentially lead it into a dangerous, unmitigated cycle of attack and retaliation. But the question remains: are we ready for this--or any--portrayal of events nearly five years past, yet still too fresh in so many minds?
Greengrass is not the first to use his art form to examine the effects of 9/11. Spike Lee made his 25th Hour an oblique commentary on New York's reaction to the tragedy. A number of documentaries have dealt with 9/11, and the Discovery Channel recently aired a TV movie about Flight 93 to the network's highest-ever ratings. Even Oliver Stone has an upcoming film called (appropriately) World Trade Center, about Port Authority workers trapped in the rubble of the Twin Towers, starring Nicolas Cage. But United 93 is the first feature production of its scale** to put us on the plane that fateful morning, the first to ask us to reexperience, in a darkened theater, our shock and disbelief as we watch the story unfold from the viewpoints of the ordinary Americans onboard.
This seems a tall order for a mainstream Hollywood venture, especially at a time when we are still dealing militarily with the repercussions of 9/11. Zacarias Moussaoui looks like he will face the death penalty for his part in the hijackers' preparations, as he sits before a jury that will have heard dozens of horrific tales from victims' families recounting their loved ones' final moments. And, of course, there is the trailer's reception as the film's release date looms (April 28). All of these factors might make United 93 either an unprecedented word-of-mouth hit or one of the biggest fiascoes in modern cinema history, a victim not of 9/11, but of the American public's awkward, labored coming-to-terms with that thunderbolt morning.
I have my private reservations, but I'll wind up seeing it. Tell me what you think. Leave a comment, yes or no, and maybe a few words. This is something we all, as Americans, have opinions about. I'd like to hear yours.
*: If you don't know Bloody Sunday, think Kent State. Add hundreds of years of English political and military oppression of the Irish people. Multiply it by decades of terrorism and urban guerilla warfare waged among civilian populations on both sides of the conflict. You'll almost get the point.
**: Universal has its money behind United 93, though the film is conspicuously lacking in starpower. This could be due to the filmmakers not wanting to distract from the "real Americans" element of the story, or because there's no way your Clooneys and Pitts would risk the potential hit to their Q-Ratings. Perhaps a convenient mix of the two. You be the judge.
