yesterday, mrs. noz and i saw united 93. this was the movie i once dreaded. i just couldn't imagine how they wouldn't wreck the story, either by making the people who resisted on the plane into cardboard cut-out heroes, or by otherwise seeping the story with politics to make it nothing more than a propaganda piece. that's the state we are in right now. 9/11 is such a politically charged event for us. it is evoked by all sorts of people to justify almost anything. no national politician hasn't brought it up in a speech repeatedly in the past four and one-half years.
in that context, we've buried the raw horror of the event until the mountain of policy decision that followed. it's really difficult to remember that day without also remember a whole lot of other things too. we see 9/11/01 through a lense of wars, government reorganizations, surveillance, detainee issues, etc. politicians use images of 9/11 to evoke certain feelings in us, but their use of it also changes what we feel about the day. it conflates what happened with what came after in our minds.
"united 93" (the film) managed to cut through all that and focus our attention on a single ninety minute period on the morning of september 11, 2001. and it pulls it off largely by leaving stuff out. the film starts with the hijackers praying in a new jersey hotel room, just before they leave for the airport, and ends with the impact. it makes no effort to explain the hijacker's motives, or even who they are. or even who any of their victims are. there are no political speeches, no mention of any other countries, no politicians at all. there were no voiceover expositions, no character ever tried to tell us what it all meant, indeed, there were several scenes in which complete confusion reigned. the soundtrack is minimal and there were no recognizable actors on screen. in fact, quite a few people were non-actors playing themselves. (actually, the non-actors did an amazing job, i never once thought any performance fell flat or was not completely believable) all of the people involved looked ordinary, some were overweight and old, not a single supermodel appeared on screen.
they didn't do any of that. what they did do was use a documentary style, dialogue was sometimes unclear and confused. when the hijackers spoke arabic, they didn't always give you a subtitle, putting you in the place of the confused passengers who didn't understand the orders that were being shouted at them. it was filmed with a handheld camera, with that jerky style that usually annoys me, but did a great job capturing the confusion and sense of unbalance throughout the entire event. the hijackers themselves were portrayed in an interesting way. you could see that they were nervous, while also it made no bones about their brutality. acts of violent were very fast, sometimes hard to follow, but you got the point when it was over and could see the body.
but i haven't mentioned the most notable thing about the film. it was an emotional experience, really a bodily experience. from the first scene, actually before the first scene, when the universal pictures globe appeared, my heart started pounding. it didn't stop until at least a half-hour after we left the theater. in many ways the film was an ordeal--gut-wrenching to watch. it was both transfixing and difficult to sit through. i couldn't wait for it to be over, and yet dreaded the ending.
in short (if i'm allowed to say that after this long rambling post), "united 93" may be the best portrayal of that story you could possibly do, a story everyone in the audience already knew. it somehow managed to do the impossible, strip 9/11 of its post-hoc meaning and give you the raw event as if you were back then too. but reliving the raw event might not be for everyone. i came out thinking: that was a really good film, but i will never see it again.
