United 93 -- A Gripping Account

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United 93 arrived in theaters this April amidst protests and fears that the country wasn’t ready to relive the pain and the horror of what we have come to refer to as “9/11.” Several theaters yanked prints containing trailers of the film and much to the distress of this reviewer, others flat-out refused to show the completed film. After a stronger-than-expected opening, ticket sales for United 93 have steadily tapered off. Sadly but not completely surprising, fickle American moviegoers have shoved aside British director Paul Greengrass’s film in favor of the likes of such mid-brow yet anticipated blockbusters as The DaVinci Code and Poseidon. Quite simply, United 93 is both superior filmmaking and a celebration of the lives of the individuals who lost their lives that fateful day.

Featuring many of the actual air traffic controllers and military personnel who charted the course of the aircraft from their control towers, United 93 is a solemn and studied account of the heroic effort of thirty-seven passengers and four airline crew to derail the plot and the path of its Iraqi hijackers. The film’s use of low light, an almost anonymous yet astonishing cast, and its perfectly modest score convey the severity and the seriousness of the circumstances confronting the passengers and the world. The passangers’ collective act of valor prevented the hijackers from crashing the commercial plane into the capitol building, thus saving the lives of hundreds of U.S. citizens.

Told in real time, the 111-minute drama captures the mass frenzy that occupied the air traffic control rooms in New York City. The air traffic controllers, some of whom portray themselves in this film, watched in horror as two commercial airplanes flew into the World Trade Center. Those who watch this film will undoubtedly think back to what they were doing when they first learned of the disaster. Many Americans can still recall what they were doing when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and their ability to recount their activities at the moment they first learned of the attack on the World Trade Center is no different.

Ironically, the film’s clearest message might be that all of the individuals on United 93—the Iraqi hijackers and the passengers who feared them and their plot against America-- were people of God. Alternating scenes of Iraqi hijackers holding their hands together and saying Islamic prayers and American men, women, and children in very nearly the same posture and gestures saying Christian prayers as the plane and its passengers are heading towards a horrific end is perhaps the single most compelling image in American cinema this year. Such an image in the film begs not one but thousands of questions. One of which is what is it about America that prompted people of God to assume a terrorist position and to pray so fervently for its destruction? One hopes that American Christians who see the film will reject the common and more visceral reaction to seek revenge without first recognizing that the terrorists who they have been conditioned to believe are their enemies are first and foremost, people of God.

The brilliance of United 93 is that rises above the politics that have been used to support and discount the film. United 93 is insightful and balanced, painful and riveting, all in one. In all of its veracity, it pays homage to the passengers who bravely stopped their flight from its intended destination and to the country they fought so valiantly to protect. The film is a true depiction of the triumph of the human spirit that at its basic level is buoyed by religion—in all of its goodness and in all of its horrors. After watching United 93, we are in awe of the courage exhibited by the U.S. passengers and are left pondering the hard, heavy questions that religion and life pose for the citizens of the world, whose lives may have been changed forever by the events of September 11.

Grade: A

Movie News and Notes

The five highest grossing movies at the end of the Memorial Day weekend are as follows: X-Men 3, The DaVinci Code, Over the Hedge, Mission Impossible 3, and Poseidon.

Although opening to mixed reviews, X-Men 3: The Last Stand set box office records for the Memorial Day weekend, earning approximately $120.1 million over four days. The previous record for the weekend was set by Steven Spielberg’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997.

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth earned an impressive $365,787, despite opening in just four New York City and Los Angeles theaters.

Spike Lee is directing When the Levees Broke, a documentary examining the U.S. government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. The television production will air sometime in 2006.

Milos Forman is directing Goya’s Ghost. The film depicts an account in which painter Francisco Goya finds himself in a scandal involving a woman who is labeled a heretic by a monk. Stellan Skarsgaard stars as Francisco Goya, and Javier Bardem is the monk.

David Fincher is set to direct Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Pitt plays a fifty-year-old man who ages backward when he falls in love with a thirty-year-old portrayed by Blanchett. The film is set to be released in 2007.