09 February 2012
REVIEW - 9/11 runaway plane lands in Hollywood
18 August 2006
By Ali Bell: Te Waha Nui Online
United 93
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Released August 17
In the world of superb plane disaster movies United 93 flies best of all.
A really good plane disaster movie will say something about endurance, about trauma, about community and social contact, about how the individual fares against all odds. Perhaps something about the zeitgeist of the moment. And most importantly – about disaster! And it should look really good doing it too, obviously – we’re up there in the clouds after all, or crashing down to earth, the way you do.
United 93 does all of that and more. Except it’s the World Trade Centre from afar, or hearing about the Pentagon as most of us did – on the news.
And it’s up close and personal with the passengers, the terrorists, and the crew of the plane. It’s shot in a documentary ‘fly on the wall’ style, in close to real-time and a shaky camera.
Early on in the film, we follow the pilots chatting onto the plane, and this sets the emotional tone of the experience. You know what is going to happen by the end of the movie, what they may have to endure in the meantime (and you are watching the movie to find out), and you feel enormous compassion for these characters who only five years ago were real people and alive. And this includes the attackers themselves.
Some of the characters are playing themselves – in the flight control room, in the military flight control room of the US air defence, and airline employees. When you see this on the credits you feel even more that you’ve been privileged to witness a profound experience, engaging the most profound feelings of attempting survival. But this is not a film where famous actors, faces or names are going to catch your eye.
The story is told from the terrorists’ point of view as well. I read that during shooting the men playing the attackers and the crew and passengers were kept separate to further accentuate the feeling of ‘them against us’ up there in the action onboard. If that is so, it was a clever and effective technique of director Paul Greengrass.
The waiting and the tension surrounding the moment of attack, and the spiritual preparation is excruciating, but dramatically and brilliantly so. After seeing the movie you can be forgiven for experiencing the freaked-out repetition of ‘Allah Akbar’, by wanting to run for the nearest exit. But it is interesting to be multi-identifying with both the passengers and the attackers, a wonderful aspect of movie-watching. And it’s why seeing this movie is so moving and disturbing.
I was waiting to hear a Kiwi accent from one of the ‘big men’ passengers, but alas, in vain. From the point of attack and counter-attack by the passengers, to the incredible spiralling descent of the plane in Pennsylvania, the tension is the thickest. The action and fight forward, and fight back, is a constant, relentless round of fear and stark violence, the desire to live, to get the plane up – or hit a target – to the bitter end. Fliers, against a fearsome few. Up in the sky, nothing but you in the plane, who you are, and who you are with.
An agonising and awesome experience.
