Hollywood Not History - Q-News July 2006, Issue 367

Did the passengers of United 93 actually rip the baddies to shreds and teach them a lesson before they died? Will our believing they did diminish some of the grief of their senseless deaths? Sufia Lodhi finds that United 93 raises, but fails to answer, some unsettling questions.

As the camera tracks across a set of sandy footprints on a glittering night-blue shoreline, a woman’s voice begins, “about four million years ago our distant ancestors did something amazing… It is the moment, for many, that we made the leap from ape to man” If you didn’t know the title of this BBC commissioned documentary you would be forgiven for assuming it was another flashy reconstruction of how we supposedly used to be, using hairy extras, digital enhancement and lingering shots of backlit fossil remains. But this is no reconstruction. “Imagine”, continues the woman, “that there are human beings who never made this leap”. The next shot is the astonishing sight of a fully-grown woman walking on all fours; back arched, arms and legs extended, feet and hands splayed.

On my way to see United 93, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago when I was trying to convince him to see Titanic. “Why should I?” he asked. “I already know that the boat sinks in the end.”
In its bare representation of what happened - a plane was hijacked and everyone on board was killed - United 93 hits the mark. However, a story without context is meaningless. And this one openly admits to be based purely on conjecture.

The film’s opening scene is a beautiful aerial shot of Manhattan, accompanied by the voice of a man reciting the Quran. Shots alternate between the banal scenes of airport check-in to four men praying and packing their bags. Passengers (all white, middle-class Americans - note to Director Paul Greengrass: have you been to an airport lately?), all unsuspecting travelers, waiting patiently in line, smiling and chatting with the super-friendly staff of United Airlines. The would-be-hijackers walk purposefully towards the airport, each one looking more edgy than the next. None of them speak to each other. One member of the cell visibly struggles with cold feet and makes a phone call to a loved one, whispering in Arabic, “I love you.” Finally, the flight is called and the passengers board.

Meanwhile, the attacks on the World Trade Center are unfolding under the watchful, if incompetent, eye of both NORAD and New York air traffic control. We relive the gut wrenching attacks on the twin towers and are pulled back to United 93, where the hijackers have made their move, stabbing several passengers and taking over the cockpit.

Terror and hysteria engulf the plane. The hijackers are looking decidedly unstable, screaming prayers and verses of the Quran like hateful war cries to a vengeful God. The Lord’s Prayer is simultaneously recited by the passengers - an appeal to a merciful, loving Saviour. A few men, who we recognize from the Business Class seats earlier in the film, take charge and devise a plan. Suspecting that the bomb strapped to hijacker #1 is a fake, they collect make-shift weapons in preparation to overcome the hijackers. They seize the moment and attack one terrorist, then the next in the most harrowing scenes of the movie. The men are literally ripped apart.

Yes, yes, I know that the hijackers were trying to kill everyone on board but their gruesome deaths were shown in far too horrifying detail. Of course, this is the customary way that villains die in action movies. Pushed out of a plane to splat on the ground below, punched into the spinning blades of a helicopter or mangled in the motor of a boat. Standard fare. These were the bad guys and they deserved to die a grisly death. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that their agony was the audiences’ pay off for enduring the tension of the film to this point.

Each hijacker holds off the passengers for as long as he can before we watch him scream, his fingers being broken, face mangled and covered in blood. The passengers finally reach the pilot, causing the plane to ditch earlier than the intended target and ultimately saving the Capitol Building. Screen goes black.

And that’s how it happened. It must be the truth because many of the people who were there that day were featured in the film. The credits themselves are chockablock with every level of the US government, military and civil aviation personnel imaginable. That’s a pretty good showing from people who couldn’t stop four planes from flying off their scheduled flight paths, with three crashing into buildings. Very coordinated indeed. The film is at pains to demonstrate the failure of communications that delayed the military response that might have averted some of the tragedy.

So, in the actual sinking of the Titanic, was there really a man named Jack who sacrificed his own life to save the woman he loved? Who knows? And more importantly, who cares? It makes a better story to believe that he did. Did the passengers of United 93 actually rip the baddies to shreds and teach them a lesson before they died? Will our believing they did diminish some of the grief of their senseless deaths?

It’s a filmmaker’s job to give the audience what they want. Anyone looking for answers on what really happened on that terrible day will not find them sitting in the cushy chairs of their local Cineplex. This is, after all, Hollywood. Not history class.