United 93 is gripping, emotionally draining, perfectly acted, and stunningly realistic. See it.
For too long our culture has said, "If it feels good, do it." Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: "Let's roll." In the sacrifice of soldiers, the fierce brotherhood of firefighters, and the bravery and generosity of ordinary citizens, we have glimpsed what a new culture of responsibility could look like. We want to be a nation that serves goals larger than self. We've been offered a unique opportunity, and we must not let this moment pass.
– George W. Bush, State of the Union, 2002
I raved about Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby, but conservatives yelled at me, preposterously arguing that it stood for euthanasia.
One year later, I scolded the right and the left for childishly scorning Brokeback Mountain, a film which remains etched in the minds of those mature enough to actually watch it.
So it’s nice, as I write today, to praise a film which is — for once! — praised by conservatives and liberals alike: United 93.
Some have compared United to Schindler’s List, but this is simplistic. True, they both explore human conflict and the manifestation of evil, but so do many movies. Schindler’s List, unlike United 93, however, is both perfect cinema — perfect art — as well as one of film history’s most gut-wrenching historical epics. United 93 is not an epic. It is an excellent film that everyone — including schoolchildren and people afraid of flying — should see. But whereas Schindler’s List practically defines artistry in film, there is nothing at all artistic about United. It is a movie made like a documentary — with actors stepping in for the real-life heroes and heroines on United 93.
Indeed, the film’s greatest attribute is that it has no agenda or faux intellectual theme. Imagine what it would be like to see videotape of what happened in air traffic control centers up and down the Eastern Seaboard on September 11, and on United 93 itself. That’s what the film seeks to show. Writer/director Paul Greengrass deserves tremendous credit for creating the movie as realistically as possible. We should all consider ourselves lucky that the first 9/11 movie was not directed, written, or produced by Barbra Streisand.
United 93 was not made, as some have said, “too soon.” On the contrary, it is long overdue. Disrespect to the victims — or to the United States — would have been greeted with overwhelming disapproval, and of course I would join that sentiment. But United peddles no particular belief — disrespect or otherwise. That’s the point. It is utterly without controversy — unless you happen to be a member of al Qaeda, in which case you should not see it.
In the end, no movie can evoke in audiences the terror of September 11. You had to live through it to understand it. But if a movie was going to be made, I’m glad United 93 was the result. It is gripping, emotionally draining, perfectly acted, and stunningly realistic. See it.
isterrett@hotmail.com
Read more articles by Isaiah Z. Sterrett
Indeed, the film is a near-documentary,but in WHAT the filmmakers chose to present and HOW they presented it (devoid of polemics), they were revealing the souls of Romanticists (depicting man as he might and ought to be), and not Naturalists (merely holding up the mirror).
If Naturalism was their intention, the filmmakers would have been reportorial, journalistic and politically tendentious in their presentation. Instead, their focus was on the qualities of the everyday men and women on that plane, not on the "clash of civilizations" that that historic day brought to the fore. That subject may be for another day and another film, not this one.
As to the politics, writer Andrew Sullivan says about all one needs to say in that department:
"The story of that flight is a transcendent one of self-government and self-defense; it's a metaphor for ordinary folks taking back their destiny from evil; it's an inspiring parable for democracy itself, and the genuine martyrdom it only recently demanded. I still wonder what would have happened to the American psyche if those monsters had successfully attacked the Capitol, the symbol of democratic government. Whenever I think of that remarkable flight, my admiration for the men and women involved surges."
Sullivan, expressing the view of many, does not intend to see “United 93” (“The trauma is still too close. … [S]ometimes, the sacred is best respected through silence”). It’s an admirable sentiment, but it is made without a full understanding the movie’s core theme and significance, not only for today but all the days to come. Although we don’t need to be reminded of the existential horrors associated with that fateful flight, what trumps is that we can’t be reminded enough of those 35, largely nameless, passengers on it and what they did.
The memorial to these souls who died in that western Pennsylvania field, and in the frames of this film, is a testimonial to them and to the best in us—MAN'S SOUL UNDER TEST. Ayn Rand (who is among those pictured at the top of this Web site), in her introduction to Victor Hugo's last novel, "Ninety-Three," which uses the 1793 French Revoultion as a background to present this theme, could as well be talking about "United 93":
"Do not say that the actions of these giants are 'impossible' because they are heroic, noble, intelligent, beautiful—remember that the cowardly, the depraved, the mindless, the ugly are not all that is possible to man."
Comment by Frederick Hastings | May 9, 2006