Devastating, but to what end?

Rating: 6/10 (29 April 2006)

I'm a fan of "Bloody Sunday" and a high admirer of director Paul Greengrass even though I see this film as far removed from a masterpiece.
It's excruciatingly painful, at times very effective. Greengrass has a gift for enveloping an audience and providing it with a visceral movie-going experience. His hand-held camera is not the gimmicky trick of so many other directors, but a tool to drop viewers into the middle of confusing, horrific chaos.
But is this enough to make the case for a great film or even an important one? Some professional reviewers have based their overwhelming praise only on how the film made them feel -- devastated, glum, fearful, pained. It made me feel those ways, too. But the impact of the film is in the name of what? There has not been a terribly persuasive review to seriously contemplate that question or at least make a convincing case for the answer.
Greengrass has received a lot of points for what he didn't do in this film. It's not a cheap overtly exploitative film; it doesn't use big stars; it strives for the feeling of authenticity using many non-actors, some of whom were even part of September 11. That's an achievement and points to some real artistic and personal integrity on his part, but it still doesn't make a case for a significantly worthwhile film.
"United 93" should not be considered a masterpiece simply because Denzel Washington hasn't been cast as the leader of the passengers and the music doesn't swell up when they fight back.
The film is deliberately stripped of all political and historical context to provide one director/writer's perspective of what could have occurred on United 93 that terrible day. The film's only relief from the claustrophobic plane interior is crosscutting to aviation authorities who are baffled over what is taking place.
Everything about the film is "experiential"; it's about what it might have felt like during those horrific hours. And nothing more.
It succeeds in providing a feeling of naturalism by avoiding traditional sentimentality, played-up dialogue and familiar character background, but it would be wrong to buy into the idea that Greengrass doesn't have his own agenda.
Yes, he goes to great lengths to recreate many physical details and moments: He has talked to the families and other key 9/11 players and reviewed 9/11 documents. But there are large gaps that he fills with scenes meant to prop up the ordinary passengers of United 93 as collective hero.
Maybe they were, but all that happened on that flight and why it happened are not known. What we do know is that the passengers of United 93 realized that they would most certainly die had they not fought back. What we do know is that their dangerous effort was their only chance to survive.
Did they fight back strictly out of self survival or to spare so many other deaths on the ground or both? Since the passengers' collective heroism is at the center of the film, there is plenty of speculation; we get scenes where the passengers kill terrorists and the group boldly breaks into the cockpit.
When the entire justification for a movie is that we must never forget, the reasons for providing details that are not verifiable must be seriously considered. United 93 has taken on mythological proportions since September 11. I maintain that Greengrass does not mean to truly debunk that mythology but to give it more gravity.
The movie's first half hour or so stirs up unimaginable dread in the audience. Greengrass does a masterful job in showing ordinary people preparing to take an ordinary flight. Since we know how it will turn out, the palpable horror builds slowly but surely. And since we do not identify with these passengers, we're simply waiting for a hell we know is certain to take place. It's unbearable, but is it justified? Is it enlightening or edifying in any significant way or does it simply fill us with visceral fear?
Greengrass makes these moments even harder to take by the little pieces of conversation we overhear among passengers and crew. Many of them talk about children or trips they are going to take. The conversations have a non-movieish ring of "ordinary," but they also become a piercing reminder of what these people unknowingly are about to leave behind or will never be able to experience. Isn't it possible that one of them also talked about the Yankees or the traffic or something that wouldn't blatantly remind us of a shockingly shortened life?
Like "United 93," other movies have focused on minutiae, but the best of them have built to something larger and monumental. "Shoah," the marathon documentary about the Holocaust, is the best example. Director Claude Lanzmann asks detailed, mundane questions that build in mind and feeling of experience over the course of many hours. The enormity of the Holocaust slowly accumulates so that the movie becomes much "larger" than the questions that are asked.
But "United 93" does the opposite. It doesn't build to something larger by focusing on mundane details. It removes political and historical context from a dark historic day and shrinks 9/11 down to making its audience live out a hellish last plane ride with ordinary people.
With all context missing in this film, what then does it really say about 9/11, and is there any reason to take this trip with them? Greengrass is such a good filmmaker and has us so devastated that we can't stop shaking long enough to realize the answer to these two important questions are not that much and no.