is this cinema?

Rating: 5/10 (13 July 2006)

I expected a lot going in for the screening of 'United 93'. Everything I read about the film made me believe I would love it: the integrity, the sober and unattached style in which the film is shot, indeed would prevent that this would be just another propaganda film for the mighty and superb America that brainwashes us everyday. But no, this is 'Elephant' in the air. A stylistic exercise in how you can prevent the viewer from feeling anything. Instead of realistic, it sucked all the reality out of the facts. Since someone made us believe that a shaking camera means reality, some directors can't shake the camera enough. We are the flies on the wall here, but we don't know where to watch first, cause everything is shouting and screaming. Paul Greengrass pushes our faces in the chaos of 9/11 and leaves it all to us what to do with it. Avoiding the manipulate doesn't mean one shouldn't do anything. Objectivity doesn't exist anyhow. And surely this film isn't objective. It makes choices, but many wrong ones. Okay, if this film proves anything, then it is that the chaos on 9/11 was that strong that nobody did what they had to do, that everyone was so surprised that they missed many opportunities to save lives. I'm the last one to say that film has to have a message, but here I wonder why this film was made. It hardly made me feel anything. I feel much more when I watch the news footage of 9/11 over and over again. I really don't understand why this film was made. To make us believe this should never happen again? I knew that. As every human being I knew that from the moment I saw it happen. Disbelief was also my first impression. And it's also the impression the characters in the film of Paul Greengrass. That explains why they don't get into action. Is that why this film was made? To show that reality can be that aggressive, that hard, that unbelievable that the people watching it, can't uplift their disbelief? While we're trained to do that, by watching films. I wonder. When I read 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close By' I was touched by the story of this little boy who is trying to understand for himself. Here, I have a director trying to understand what was happening that day, but his story doesn't do anything to me.