Denerstein: The day the earth stood stunned

Real time all too real in powerful 'United 93'

Published April 28, 2006 at midnight

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It could have been you. It could have been me. It could have been your mother or father, your son or your daughter.

On Sept. 11, 2001, a variety of passengers boarded United Flight 93 at Newark Airport. They were bound for San Francisco, and it probably didn't occur to any of them that 81 minutes later their bodies and the plane would be strewn across a Pennsylvania field.

Great dramas spring from ordinary moments, something director Paul Greengrass understands all too well. This observation - that sweeping historical forces can be engaged even as people make small talk - gives United 93 a compelling sense of authenticity.

And unlike the passengers on United 93, we know what's coming. That knowledge ties our stomachs in knots of tension and dread.

I don't know whether you should see United 93. I know that I went reluctantly and emerged with a feeling of subdued but inescapable grief - for those who died on United 93, for those who perished in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and for our own vanquished sense of security. I can tell you only that, in my judgment, events are revealed, not exploited. After that, you're on your own.

Is United 93 difficult to watch? Of course. How could a realistic movie about Sept. 11 be otherwise? Still, if you want to get deeper inside the events of that day than you thought possible, Greengrass is ready to take you - and without the protection of any philosophical seat belts.

Greengrass is well-versed in this kind of high drama; he directed the historical Bloody Sunday, which dealt with a 1972 massacre that took place during a Derry civil rights march in Northern Ireland.

In United 93, he uses his considerable skills to create a movie of undeniable power. The hand-held camera and fly- on-the-wall techniques are apparent from the start, but the movie's effectiveness relies as much on what Greengrass doesn't do as on what he does.

He employs no recognizable faces. He keeps speculation to a minimum. He eschews trumped-up ironies. And, most important, he allows much of the movie to take place on the ground in the various control centers (New York, Boston and Cleveland) that are attempting to deal with the chaos of a day few thought possible.

As the movie unfolds, you wish you could enter the frame and tell the baffled air controllers what's happening. Or perhaps you'll feel as much confusion as aviation officials, who only gradually begin to grasp the enormity of the evolving events. Ben Sliney, Federal Aviation Administration head of operations, whose first day on the job was Sept. 11, plays a key role. This is the real guy. Other real people play themselves in the movie, as well. Stay for the credits because they help validate the movie's authenticity.

Others have attempted to tell us about Flight 93, but Greengrass may have made the definitive account, allowing his movie to unfold in real time. Some of the film's details have been contradicted in recently revealed black- box tapes, but it hardly matters given the overall quality and impact of the effort.

Greengrass is smart enough to know we don't need much by way of manipulation here. I could have done with a little less of John Powell's score, but in refusing to develop a main character and in allowing activity to spread to the fringe of every frame, Greengrass pushes an audience to its limits. We're at the center of events that many of us tend to remember purely in terms of our own experience.

Once the hijackers take over - they're depicted as monkish religious zealots - the passengers come to grips with the fact that they're going to die. They also know, from phone calls, that the World Trade Center towers have been struck.

Some make a fateful decision to try to stop the hijackers, perhaps in hopes of saving their own lives. Seen from up close, it doesn't matter whether the passengers who stormed the hijackers were heroes or pragmatists or both. They acted, and Greengrass presents that action without the usual dramatic fire-stoking.

Greengrass tries hard to keep us where we were on Sept. 11, not where we are now. Even when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower at 8:46 a.m., it wasn't clear precisely what had happened. Was it a small plane? Much like everyone else, traffic controllers fixated on CNN.

In the end, I don't know that United 93 changed my view of anything. But it brought me back to the feelings of a day none of us ever will forget, a day of panic, grief and disbelief, a day in which our world was forever changed. It's that return - to the ground zero of our emotions - that makes the movie worth seeing. It's an amazingly realized and deeply chastening piece of work.

United 93

Aboard a 9/11 flight

• Grade: A-

• Rating: R

• Running time: 110 minutes

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