Fight and flight

Crew and passengers charge the plane's hijackers in Paul Greengrass's film, United 93. Photo Johnathan Olley/Universal Studios.

United 93 is the most talked about film that no one seems to want to see. Only five years removed from the tragedy of 9/11 — the aftermath of which will continue to define America’s place in the world and its foreign policy for years to come — the mere existence of the film has been called into question. Even the trailer has drawn fire. Is it too soon? Is it exploitative? Is it a mockery? And just how is it going to play in multiplexes alongside popcorn fare like Mission: Impossible III and The Da Vinci Code?

If a filmmaker is going to venture into territory as fraught as this, it better be someone with the intelligence and impeccable credentials of Paul Greengrass. A former BBC documentarian, he’s previously helmed both the Hollywood action picture The Bourne Supremacy and the excellent Bloody Sunday, a docudrama about the 1972 massacre of unarmed Irish protestors by British soldiers. Greengrass, who wrote and directed United 93, met with the families of the victims and got their blessing, before spending months meticulously researching the film. He drew on the 9/11 Commission Report, interviews with military and aviation personnel, the black-box tapes and the recorded phone calls and voicemail messages from the doomed passengers.

In the years since the attacks of Sept 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 has approached mythic status as the “flight that fought back.” On its way to San Francisco from Newark, runway back-ups stalled the takeoff. By the time United 93 got into the air at 8:42 a.m., hijackings were already underway on three other flights. Just four minutes later, one hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. And before four men took control of United 93, media outlets were already reporting on the attacks and speculating on who was behind them. United 93 pilots received a warning just as the cockpit was breached; passengers got updates from friends and family via cellphones and air phones. Unlike those on the other flights, they understood their fate and could — and did — take action: a desperate uprising prevented the plane from reaching its target in Washington. Instead, it crashed in a field outside of Shanksville, Penn.

Greengrass’s film, which runs, 24-style, in real time and is shot with the jarring immediacy and intimacy of handheld cameras, opens with the hijackers’ preparations in a generic hotel room — praying, packing and shaving — before cutting to scenes at the airport. Awaiting their flight, passengers type on laptops and skim newspapers, snooze and sip coffee. Stewardesses stock up on sugar packets, while pilots monitor the fuelling of the plane and chat about their vacations. Meanwhile, at the Federal Aviation Administration command centre in Virginia, Ben Sliney (who plays himself in the film) starts his first day as operations manager. He humbly receives congratulations from his staff and heads into a meeting. Knowing what’s to come, these scenes are heartbreaking. It’s a testament to Greengrass’s humanity that the characters never seem more alive than they do in these banal moments. Life, Greengrass suggests, is glorious in its dailiness. He might have added the blessing: May you live in boring times.

Air traffic controllers at Newark Airport react to unfolding events in United 93. Photo Universal Studios.

Then, at various control centers, as well as the Northeast Air Defence Sector base in Rome, N.Y., alarming reports start trickling in. First one, then, two more planes stop responding to air controllers. A transmission is picked up indicating that multiple planes have been hijacked. And following that, the unthinkable happens: the World Trade Center is hit, along with the Pentagon. Though Greengrass’s politics are not overt — this is a memorial, not a polemic — the film clearly indicts the official response to the crisis. While the military, the FAA and various airport control centers scrambled to make sense of the events, President George W. Bush spent several agonizing, precious minutes in a Florida classroom listening to the story My Pet Goat. Frustrated by their inability to coordinate efforts, officials bark orders at subordinates and helplessly watch the news unfold on CNN. One of the most disturbing scenes is one that has been replayed again and again and has yet to lose its power — a shot from the perspective of the control tower in Newark of the second plane crashing into the Twin Towers. United 93 alternates between these scenes of mounting chaos on the ground and the calm on board the flight. It’s a reprieve from the visceral, adrenaline-churning tension, but just a brief one. Even as one hijacker seems to hesitate, building the impossible hope that maybe there could be a happy ending, United 93 is taken by four men wielding knives and a bomb.

In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, United 93 could have dissolved here into easy heroics or cheap sentiment. But Greengrass gives every character his or her due. The cast, a combination of unknown and little-known actors and actual pilots, airline crew members and air controllers, is to a person understated and convincing; they are fully fleshed individuals even in the briefest of appearances. And while he never justifies their actions, Greengrass offers the hijackers no less dignity. They are terrible, misguided zealots, but they are never caricatures. One is even overheard whispering "I love you" to someone over the phone before he boards the plane. Greengrass eschews gratuitous violence and avoids jingoism; when some of the passengers and crew decide to fight back, it’s not out of patriotism, it’s an attempt to save their own lives. Even passenger Todd Beamer’s now famous utterance, “Let’s roll!” is downplayed. Not that Greengrass doesn’t give the audience a moment of vengeance. He portrays the passengers killing two hijackers before the plane crashes, though there is no evidence to indicate that this happened. And even as this is comforting, particularly to the families of the passengers and crew to whom Greengrass is so scrupulously respectful, it’s a souring note. It seems less an honest tribute to the courage of those on United 93, than a pandering to the audience’s self-regard and fears of its own mortality. More troubling is the intimation that brave victims are more worthy of our remembrance than those who cowered.

For all its strengths — and they are legion — United 93 ultimately doesn’t add up to more than an extraordinarily accomplished re-creation. Boxed into a corner by his own good intentions and restraint, Greengrass tells a wrenching story, but doesn’t transcend the immediate, awful events to offer a new perspective or illuminate a larger truth. There is only one moment when he seems to be reaching for something deeper, a stunning scene that shows the hijackers and passengers simultaneously in prayer as the plane goes down. It’s a meditation on the potential of faith to both save and destroy. Having tackled religious tensions in Bloody Sunday, Greengrass might just have been the artist to elucidate this persistent, deadly contradiction. And as the divide between the religious and secular becomes one of the most pressing issues of our time, one can only lament that he did not.

United 93 opens across Canada on April 28.

Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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