Film
Bloody Tuesday
by Helene Wong
There are no heroes and no judgments in this 9/11 movie.
Confined space with no way out has always been a staple setting for dramatic conflict, as numerous past (Airport et al), recent (Flight-plan) and forthcoming (Snakes on a Plane) aeroplane movies attest to. United 93’s purpose, however, is not to entertain but to bear witness to and memorialise those who died in the fourth hijacked plane on 9/11, in a field in Pennsylvania, and understand how it happened.
There’s probably no one better to do this than Paul Greengrass, who brings objectivity as a non-American, and whose work on Bloody Sunday and Omagh well qualifies him for meticulously researched and intensely involving re-enactments of terrorist violence. From transcripts, TV clips, 9/11 Commission documents and interviews with workers in the Eastern Seaboard control centres and with the crew’s and passengers’ families, he and his team have forged a gripping dramatisation that renders white-knuckling through turbulence embarrassingly trivial.
The 91-minute flight unfolds in real time, preceded by the introduction of all the “characters” – starting with the four hijackers waking and praying in their hotel room – whose lives will soon converge. We see the US military preparing for a scheduled air defence exercise; the new head of the FAA’s operations command centre, Ben Sliney, being welcomed on his first day in the job; passengers and crew as they arrive and board their Boeing 757 for San Francisco. The use of three editors suggests the importance of getting this structure right: cutting between the key locations, subtly noting the passage of time and setting up information, visual and verbal, so that we can follow what happens further on. The ironic effect of this measured pacing and “just-another-day” casualness is to palpably build the suspense, in a similar manner to the nerve-wracking opening of Omagh.
On the plane, it is the very familiarity and mundaneness of the departure rituals of air travel – stowing bags, serving drinks, safety instructions – that ratchet up the tension. It says, this could happen to anyone, any time – which in turn engenders a sense of authenticity. We accept that the re-enactment on Flight 93 is only speculation, but the realism of these early sequences suggests strongly that it is an authoritative imagining. That, and the complete absence of sentiment and sensationalism. To avoid the latter, even the violence on the plane is brief and suggested rather than graphic. Of course, both editing and camerawork (by Ken Loach collaborator Barry Ackroyd) get increasingly heated and jagged once the hijacking commences.
Greengrass is noted for his naturalistic dialogue, and no exception is made here. Much of it is improvised, but edited to heighten the drama when necessary or give quick insight into the speaker. Sometimes it’s overlapped, thrown away or whispered in snatches. It’s a help that some of the real individuals on that day are playing themselves, notably Sliney, while others play roles they occupy in real life, such as air traffic controllers and air crew. The actors playing the passengers are all unknowns, which emphasises their “ordinariness” and avoids the distorting effect of “stars”. It helps, too, that though they’re based on real persons whom they researched as part of their preparation, the absence of names and the film’s observational and even-handed point of view deliberately prevents us from engaging with them as intimately as in a fictional drama. Thus, there are heroic acts but no specific heroes or cowards, and no judgments. Even the terrorists, despite the minimal information about them, are portrayed as people in relationships, and as nervous and uncertain rather than screaming fanatics.
Greengrass’s intention in filming such an event is that “you can find in its shape something much larger than the event itself … the DNA of our times”, but that’s drawing a rather long and grandiose bow. Focused as it is on the minute-by-minute detail, the film offers no political or religious contextualising, or reflection on the wider implications. Yes, the world changed forever, but we already know that. What it does do, unlike Fahrenheit 9/11, is begin the processing of the event in a neutral, no-frills fashion. Which is not to say it isn’t gut-wrenching, but its cool-headed demystification and honouring of the dead does bring a form of closure.
UNITED 93, directed by Paul Greengrass
