One question dogged United 93 when it came out that led to a number of critics underrating it initially. No one could deny the intense, visceral power of Paul Greengrass's film, the queasy realism and punch-to-the-gut human drama of it, but considering the fact that the movie tends to leave one feeling gutted, drained and wrung out like a soggy gym sock, the question that wasn't immediately answered was: WHY? Yes, the film is a documentary-style recreation of what is believed to have happened on United Flight 93 on September 11th, but really, what's the point of making a movie like that? Why pick at the scabby wound of 9-11 in the interest of a technical experiment. Why put the audience through that emotional meatgrinder?
For a long time after the movie was released, critics in general seemed unable to come up with a satisfying answer to that question, and United 93 just sort of dissapeared from their consciousness. Now, as the season of film-year retrospectives is upon us, the movie is getting some second looks, and for a good reason. United 93 brings something to the saga of 9-11 that it has lacked for the vast majority of Americans: a human scale.
Anyone who wasn't in New York or D.C. on the day of the attacks witnessed the entire event through the distorting prism of television. And the images of that day: the planes smashing into the Twin Towers, billowing explosions, walls of smoke and ash chasing fleeing civilians through the streets, were, to a one, part of the grammar of the Hollywood blockbuster.. It's so well-acknowledged that it's become a cliche. But behind the shop-worn nature of this observation is a central truth: by experiencing 9-11 on the level of the action film, our emotional and intellectual response to it was bound to come from the same place. The frenzy of blood-lust that followed the attacks followed perfectly the script of ever revenge-fueled Bruce Willis flick ever made, and the political context that Bush and company placed the attacks, that as the opening salvo of Global War on Terror, a Clash of Civilizations, gave those feelings an ideological justification. What United 93 accomplishes is to remove trademark symbol from "The Events of 9-11" and remind us that the terrorists were simply humans, not monsters acting out the script of a demonic ideology, and that the people who died that day were simply humans, not martyrs to the cause of liberty. By humanizing 9-11, Greengrass not only makes the audience feel the bewilderment, pain, anger and sorrow of that day over again, he makes them feel it in a new way, with the stark, heart-breaking humanity of the event brought to life. Ironically enough, it took a Hollywood studio to remind people that the September 11th attacks weren't a Jerry Bruckheimer production.
Score: 9.2
3 comments:
There were snacks on the plane though, right?
That was either a Jach-ian non sequiter of mass proportions, or the world's funniest typo.
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