Mister Tee wrote:At minimum, even should it flop (which could happen: plenty of people, my wife included, just can't bring themselves to re-experience that day), it seems a classic contender for that director-not-film slot.
As many people who may not be able to see this film, I think there are still quite a few who are interested in seeing it. I was at an afternoon showing today and it was packed. People were sitting on the floor. I'm interested in seeing what the weekend numbers will be like.
The film itself is intense in moments and very sad in others. Still, I was a bit surprised because it wasn't quite as upsetting as I anticipated it would be. Maybe that's because I had already replayed what might have happened on that flight in my mind so many times previously.
‘United 93’ movie has invented details
More questions arise over 9/11-themed film
By Paul Farhi
The Washington Post
Updated: 8:00 a.m. ET April 28, 2006
"United 93," Hollywood's first big-budget film about the events of Sept. 11, 2001, is faithful to the major aspects of the tragic morning it depicts. The movie tracks the key events detailed in the 9/11 Commission Report, the most definitive source on the subject: the commandeering of the United jet by four terrorists, the panic of the passengers and the heroic rebellion that ended with the plane crashing in a field near Shanksville, Pa.
But the movie, which opens nationwide today, is a dramatic re-creation that includes scenes and images that go far beyond what is known about the attacks.
Those scenes raise questions: How far can a dramatic movie go in imposing its own reality before it distorts the public's understanding of the event? And with memories of 9/11 still vivid and raw, is it too soon for such films to be made?
The questions have special relevance as film producers prepare other 9/11-related projects. Oliver Stone, who portrayed the assassination of John F. Kennedy as the result of a conspiracy in "JFK," is the director of this summer's "World Trade Center." Sony Pictures, meanwhile, is developing the film "102 Minutes," based on the bestseller about the time span between the first tower's crash and its collapse. A TV miniseries based on the 9/11 Commission Report is also in the works.
"United 93's" director, Paul Greengrass, has said he sought to create the "plausible truth" of what happened, given that many details are unknown.
Target: Capitol or White House?
The film asserts that the hijackers' intended target was the Capitol. In one scene, Ziad Jarrah, the Lebanese terrorist who piloted the plane, props a picture of the building on the cockpit's console, imposing a cinematic answer to a question that the 9/11 Commission could not resolve: whether the terrorists were trying to hit the Capitol or the White House. Investigators said that point was a source of contention among the 9/11 plotters, with Osama bin Laden favoring a strike on the White House and others, including Mohamed Atta, favoring the Capitol.
"United 93" also suggests that the terrorists killed the pilot and co-pilot, for example, but what occurred is unclear. A United 93 flight recorder picked up the terrorists ordering someone repeatedly to "sit down" and discussing whether to "bring the pilot back" late in the hijacking.
"United 93" also shows the passengers breaching the cockpit with a beverage cart and wrestling the terrorists for control as the plane plummets. Although the 9/11 report states that the passengers fought back in the flight's final moments, the commission had no indication that the passengers entered the cockpit. The report suggests the opposite: "The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them."
Universal Pictures, the film's distributor, says researchers consulted numerous sources, including the 9/11 Commission Report, military and civilian aviation authorities, and more than 100 family members and friends of the victims. The movie's advisers included Ben Sliney, who headed the Federal Aviation Administration's Command Center in Herndon on Sept. 11; Sliney portrays himself in the film.
Lloyd Levin, a "United 93" co-producer, acknowledges that the film went beyond known facts about the flight, but he justifies the movie's approach as artistically necessary. "Our mandate was not the same as the 9/11 Commission Report," Levin said. "Our mandate was to what Paul wanted to say with this movie. We're not journalists. Paul is an artist."
He called some of the questionable depictions "choices we had to make." Whether the passengers actually breached the cockpit is "a moot point, because at that point you're in the area of metaphor," he said.
Those choices might satisfy moviegoers but they rankle those interested in a more literal portrait of the events of Sept. 11.
‘Artistic license with history'
"I would prefer history tell itself, rather than have Hollywood tell it," said Carie Lemack, whose mother, Judy Larocque, was killed on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to hit the World Trade Center. "There's so much we just don't know. Unfortunately, they're taking artistic license with history and people will believe it's accurate. Speculation is okay for drama, but it's less okay when it's purporting to tell history. If they didn't know, why didn't they just leave it out?"
Lemack, co-founder of the organization Families of September 11, has not seen the movie, but she says she was surprised and upset by its trailer and promotional poster, which shows smoke pouring from the World Trade Center towers. She also says the filmmakers missed an opportunity to spur moviegoers to find out more about terrorism and call them to action. (Universal will donate 10 percent of the movie's first weekend ticket sales to a memorial fund.)
The decision to counterattack the terrorists was made after passengers learned that other hijacked planes had crashed, according to the 9/11 report and the film. In addition to the cockpit recordings, eyewitness accounts came from crew members and passengers, who used cellphones and air phones to contact people on the ground. But those accounts were sometimes contradictory and fragmentary, and the 9/11 Commission acknowledged that many details never will be known.
Levin acknowledges that in dramatizing the course of the flight, "United 93" makes creative leaps to fill in the blanks. For example, it's not clear who among the passengers spearheaded the response to the terrorists. One passenger, in a phone call from the plane, left it vague: "Everyone's running up to first class. I've got to go. Bye." The 9/11 Commission could not identify whose voices are heard as the passengers storm the cockpit door. "United 93" tackles this uncertainty with a reasonable assumption: that the charge was led by the strongest, most athletic men, including a judo champion.
Other scenes appear to be wholly invented. In one, a passenger who argued for cooperating with the hijackers is restrained by others as the counterattack begins. In another, the passengers are shown overwhelming two hijackers and apparently killing them. Both depictions might be dramatically satisfying, but there's no evidence that either of those events occurred.
‘They got it right'
Many of the victims' immediate relatives have endorsed the movie, saying it fairly represents their final hours. David Beamer, whose son Todd Beamer was killed, told the Associated Press this week: "Our personal reaction was one of relief, because they got it right. When it comes to September 11 and United Flight 93, we don't need another movie. This one got it."
But others question whether it was necessary to make even one movie about an event that many have lived through.
Bruce Hoffman, a Washington-based counterterrorism expert with the Rand Corp., notes that the news media have long avoided replaying some of the more disturbing images of Sept. 11. But, he says: "These equally horrible events are now being depicted as entertainment. I don't know why that's more acceptable.
"Producers and directors can have the purest and best intentions to re-create the horror and tragedy and bravery of the passengers. But the bottom line is, it's still entertainment. You have to question whether making it into entertainment cheapens and demeans it."
This is the first major awards contender ever that I may purposely avoid seeing.
For years before and after 9/11 whenever I would go to New York either on personal or business trips, I would typically take the first flight from Newark to San Francisco on a Tuesday morning, usually United. Although I was home safe in bed when the first plane struck the World Trade Center, given the right set of circumstances I could have been on that plane. I don't know if I could sit through such a vivid re-enactment without seeing myself on the plane.
I have no such compunction against seeing Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. Having been in that building many times, I could have conceivably been there as well on 9/11. The difference is that had I been, I might well have made it out alive. There was no such hope of survival on United 93.
On the thumbs-down side, it got one-half of one star from Keith Uhlich at Slant Magazine:
The Cinemascope frame has never looked or felt as much like a coffin as it does during United 93, a fragile glass casket of a film in which a good cross-section of humanity (all ages, races, religions, and persuasions) have been buried alive and forced to act out an emotionally depressive, hyperactively stylized passion play with an inevitable end. No one going in to watch this thing is unaware that the plane goes down and so certain questions are predictably begged, though I'd like to first focus on what is, by all appearances, the choice bon mot of the moment: "Is it too soon?"
Answer: No. It isn't too soon and it never is. The arts do not stand still in the face of world events and anyone who tells you otherwise (or deems the question worthy of any sort of extended pontification) is a bloody fool, plain and simple. People have been making "post-9/11" art of tremendously varied quality since at least the time American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower. A filmmaker I knew back then rather callously bragged about how he intercut footage of the towers burning and falling with shots of him shrugging the whole thing off like it was no big deal. Standoffish? Yes. Adolescent? I think so. But per the maxim oft attributed to Voltaire, "I will defend to the death his right to say it." All this to declare that United 93 absolutely, undeniably has the right to exist and that to insist otherwise is tantamount to evolutional regression. And yet, wrapped up in that deceptively one-sided pronouncement is an equally apposite absolute: the right of the viewer to respond to the work in question outside of societally prescribed dictum, in any way they deem fit.
Call that prelude to a kiss of death because that's what I personally wish to bestow on United 93. In my heart of hearts I truly can't see anyone but masochists viewing this thing more than once, if at all. (If only Jesus Christ made an appearance, it'd guarantee boffo repeat box office). Writer-director Paul Greengrass's frenetic handheld camerawork, aspiring in its blue/green-tinged slickness to doc-like immediacy, and the faceless cast of unknowns, all of whom appear to be attending an actors seminar held on a Universal Studios theme park roller coaster, are in service of an ideologically muddled house of cards, which crashes to earth long before the plane does. Greengrass is good at portraying confusion, but he is incapable of providing an artist's clarity to an event that demands it. There's no moral center to United 93; Greengrass and his employers trust that recreation, along with a heavily promoted, voluminously footnoted fidelity to "fact" will carry the day. It's perfectly probable that FAA national operations manager Ben Sliney—who, in one of United 93's many officially sanctioned and exploitative twists, plays himself—stood rooted to one spot as he dealt with what must rank as the worst ever first day on the job. But recreated on film his stasis makes little sense—he comes off as the worst sort of amateur, a deer caught in the headlights put through manufactured fictional paces that he, perversely enough, lived for real. It's called blocking a scene, Mr. Greengrass. Do it.
Every action outside of the United 93 cabin feels hopelessly bogus, thrown in to generate an illusory and dishonest sense of tension, though this isn't to say things are much better when Greengrass finally drops the ground control folderol and focuses on the airborne drama. A better filmmaker would have restricted the real-time story entirely to the plane and refrained from providing sledgehammer signifiers callously warning of what's to come. When the flight captain calls the passengers' attention to the not-yet-struck World Trade Center or when one of the terrorists hangs a picture of the Capitol building on the cockpit controls the film shows its contrived and utterly offensive dramatic hand, one reliant on passing off conjecture as proven truth. It's pornography, really, a kind of somber sub-Bruckheimer sideshow that stokes our anger instead of stroking our libidos, all building to an inexorable and anticlimactic cum shot—a sound-deprived descent into black—that does nothing more than empty us of any kind of constructive emotion. We're constantly told to "never forget," but on the evidence of United 93 I have to ask what it is, exactly, we're being asked to remember beyond a Pavlovian sort of rage that constantly and deceptively folds back on itself?
Would that the film's sins were purely stylistic, it would be so much easier to dismiss. Yet while the stench of death and dread permeates every frame of United 93, it is nowhere near as strong as the stink of synergy. Certainly this isn't the first Hollywood production done in by the competing corporate and personal interests that funded it (consider the unspoken implications—both commercial and propagandistic—of the film's last-minute title change from Flight 93 to United 93), but it is the only one I've come across where the families of those onboard gave it their full-on approval. Not all the families, of course. All evidence suggests that the terrorists' relatives were left entirely out of the creative process, an action which goes a way toward revealing the film's hagiographic bias (how easy it then becomes to turn victims into heroes and adversaries into monsters) and points up the general ridiculousness of involving the families in the first place (too many cooks spoiling an already rancid broth). In Hirokazu Kore-eda's After Life, the recently dead enter a kind of peaceful purgatory where they are given a chance to review their life on videotape and pick out one memory to be re-created on film. This recreation is then played on an endless loop and becomes, in effect, the individual soul's personal heaven. What does it say about the living that the families of the United 93 passengers, acting as proxies to the deceased, have deemed a feature-length recreation of their loved ones' deaths to be a perfectly acceptable testimonial and time capsule?
There's something more than vaguely unsettling in the way grief is being bartered here and it becomes even more of a head-slapping cluster#### when one reads that 10 percent of the movie's opening-weekend grosses are going to the United 93 memorial fund. Um, excuse me: TEN PERCENT?!! Of the OPENING-WEEKEND GROSSES?!!! Leaving aside the moral and ethical quandaries of selling a family member's death to Hollywood bigwigs (which should be paramount above all else), why would anyone choosing this path accept anything less than 100 percent of every bloody penny that this thing makes? In effect, this says to me that Universal and its subsidiaries, with the full complicity of the United 93 families, have deemed every person involved in the tragedy to be less-than-10 percent human beings, revivified corpses, essentially, whose total worth is dictated by the amount of cash mustered in a standard movie-going weekend. Something is truly, soul-sickeningly rotten here and no amount of soberly enlightened testaments, fire-and-brimstone political punditry, or gaseous pronouncements to the contrary can distract from it.
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I'm reminded of Elephant, which some called pornography while a lot of critics thought was one of the most important films of the year.
I suppose a caveat is in order. Many of the reviews already posted or cited are from New Yorkers. Will the film maintain this level of praise from the rest of the country?
Four stars from Gene Seymour in Newsday; another four (for what they matter) from James Berardanelli. Raves from Edelstein in New York, Denby in The New Yorker. This film is by a country mile the most praised of the year so far, and by any rational standard should become an instant Oscar contender. At minimum, even should it flop (which could happen: plenty of people, my wife included, just can't bring themselves to re-experience that day), it seems a classic contender for that director-not-film slot.
An early Oscar candidate. What'll they think of next?
An Iraqi actor who plays a hijacker in a new film about the September 11 attacks on the United States has been denied entry into the country for the movie's premiere, he told a newspaper on Friday.
Lewis Alsamari, who has lived in Britain since 1995, stars in "United 93," which premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York next week.
Directed by Briton Paul Greengrass, the film about the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania has sparked debate about whether Americans are ready to see an on-screen portrayal of the events.
Alsamari, 30, said he may have been denied entry by the U.S. embassy in London because he served in the Iraqi army in the early 1990s.
"I think this was because I am still an Iraqi citizen and fought in the army -- but that was only because I was forced to," he told London's Evening Standard newspaper.
"It would be so disappointing not to be able to go because I still have not seen the film. I have only seen footage and it would have been amazing to be in New York for the premiere."
A spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in London said she was aware of the case, but did not have any immediate comment on the status of Alsamari's application to travel to New York.
Alsamari added: "I hope I am not going to have to wait until the film comes out in Britain to watch United 93. It seems strange that I cannot go over for the premiere."
He said he escaped from the Iraqi army in 1993 and stayed in neighboring Jordan until 1995, when he moved to Britain seeking asylum. According to the Standard, he was granted asylum in Britain in 1998.
In February, actors starring in Michael Winterbottom's politically charged "The Road to Guantanamo" were held by British police under anti-terrorism legislation on their return from Berlin where the film premiered.
One of them said a police officer abused him verbally at Luton airport.
United 93
Josh Tyler, cinemablend.com
2006-04-20 18:57:51
When it happened, for those of us watching it on TV from our living rooms and offices, the events of September 11th seemed almost like some Hollywood disaster movie. When the World Trade Center fell, many might not have been surprised to see the name Roland Emmerich emblazoned somewhere in the breaking news broadcast's credits. But now that day is a movie; a movie which, oddly enough, feels every bit as real as that day didn't.
On September 11th four planes were hijacked by murderous terrorists. Three reached their targets, causing thousands of deaths. One did not. This is the story of the random collection of passengers who stopped it. Directed by Paul Greengrass, United 93 approaches its subject in almost documentary style. It's a lot like a re-enactment, only done up with all the power and slick of a big studio budget. Greengrass takes the known facts of what happened on United Flight 93 that day, and simply puts them up on screen in a linear format. In between the lines of absolute fact, he does as little coloring in as possible. What coloring must be done is handled by his mostly unknown group of actors, improvising the natural reactions of people confronted with a terrorist takeover and then the certainty of their death. The result is something much, much too real.
This is a brutal, heart-rending film. You won't enjoy watching it. There's nothing entertaining here, only an experience of sadness, despair, and mind numbing anger. As I braced myself in my chair, clenched my fists in rage, and pulled my hat down over my eyes to fight off tears I asked myself: "But isn't this what it should be?" Greengrass has handled this open wound with all the delicacy and respect possible. There's no way this movie could have been made better. It's no wonder that the surviving families of those on the plane approved it. United 93 doesn't go for trumped up heroism or cartoonish villainy, at every turn it chooses a path of complete filmmaking honesty.
This isn't a movie; it is a testament to what happened that day. Not just on the plane, but on the ground as government officials struggled mightily to understand what was going on and react. A great deal of United 93 is spent setting the stage for what was happening around that one flight. The confusion and failure of various government agencies fighting to do something figures prominently, as flight controllers start reporting planes off course and all hell breaks loose. Greengrass's film takes the respectful stance that it wasn't the individuals that comprised the FAA or the military or even the Presidency that failed on September 11th, it was the institution.
United 93 re-awakens all the anger and outrage of the day with clean, factual re-telling focused on and around the small scale war going on inside a single plane. Only now with the confusion and shock of those first weeks erased and the war it started still completely unresolved, it's a more sharpened, burning anger. To call United 93 a powerful film is a gross understatement. It's a punch in the gut rallying call that begs people to wake the hell up and either stop or destroy the people and cultures of hatred, fanaticism, and indifference which caused it.
In a perfect world everyone should see this film, but the reality here is that not everyone can handle this movie. United 93 is almost too much to bear. Greengrass softens none of the blows of these horrific events. He displays them in all their terrifying infamy. He's done an amazing thing here, but few will have the stomach to make it all the way through. If you do and you have any soul at all, you'll leave in a completely unstable, emotional tumult. Don't see United 93 unless you are sure you're ready for it.
And The Hollywood Reporter. Quality is apparently not at issue.
I agree with the Variety point: people have already watched other recreations, so why shouldn't this be successful enough? Many objected to the trailer, because there they had no choice -- they'd sat down to watch Inside Man, and had horror thrown in their faces instead. These people will surely stay home...but probably a decent number of others will elect to see the film.
United 93
By Kirk Honeycutt
Bottom line: Unflinching account of the terror aboard the fourth hijacked plane on Sept. 11 provokes deep, disturbing emotions.
Press notes for motion pictures are usually filled with dispensable, self-congratulatory puffery, but the one for the soul-searing film "United 93" contains this trenchant comment from its English writer-director, Paul Greengrass: Speaking of the 40 individuals aboard United Airlines Flight 93, the fourth hijacked plane on that day of infamy, Sept. 11, 2001, he notes that these were the only passengers and crew members on any of those ill-fated flights who knew about the other planes having been used as weapons and realized what was happening to them. "They were the first people to inhabit the post-9/11 world," Greengrass says. These were the first to react to the worldwide conflict we find ourselves in today. Within the microcosm of that reaction, Greengrass has made an emphatic political document, a movie about defiance against tyranny and terrorism.
How many moviegoers will be willing to endure "United 93"? I suspect many will, but what that adds up to in terms of boxoffice is anybody's guess. Understandably, controversy engulfs this film. Is now the right time for such a film? Why make the film at all? These are legitimate questions. No one possesses a "right" answer. But Greengrass has made not only a thoroughly fact-checked film but a film that uncontrovertibly comes from the heart.
Greengrass wants the 91 minutes United 93 was in the air to speak to our tenuous situation in a scary, riven world. A previous film by him anticipates this work. The invaluable "Bloody Sunday" (2002), shot as if it were made by a camera crew at the time, dramatized a 1972 incident in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, where 13 unarmed civil rights demonstrators were shot and killed by British soldiers. Here again he takes a hard look at a cataclysmic event to provoke dialogue.
To keep things as accurate as possible, Greengrass reportedly interviewed more than 100 family members and friends of those who perished. He hired flight attendants and commercial airline pilots to play those roles; hired several civilian and military controllers on duty on Sept. 11, including the FAA's Ben Sliney, to play themselves; culled facts from the 9/11 Commission Report; and rehearsed and shot his actors in an old Boeing 757 at England's Pinewood Studios.
Even Barry Ackroyd's hand-held cinematography, John Powell's muted, anxious score and the plane set fixed to computer-controlled motion gimbals to simulate the pitch and roll of the aircraft urge the viewer to think of this as a you-are-there experience. Yet no one really knows what happened on United 93. We have evidence from phone calls made from the plane and those interviews, but that's where it ends. And that is where an artist can pick up the story.
This is what it probably was like, and the experience overwhelms. Time passes in weird ways. The four nervous terrorists wait seemingly forever to make their move. The panicked passengers wait seemingly forever to make theirs. Helplessness engulfs us, then determination takes hold.
During these breathless moments, Greengrass cuts away to the desperation and confusion in airport control towers, the FAA's overwhelmed operations command center in Herndon, Va., and the military's unprepared operations center at the Northeast Air Defense Sector in upstate New York. For all their monitors and electronic equipment, there is a horrific, low-tech moment when controllers at Newark Airport get a perfect view across the Hudson of the second plane hitting a World Trade Center tower. No one can even speak.
In years to come, United 93 may enter our mythology in ways unimaginable. But for now, we have a starting point. "United 93" is a sincere attempt to pull together the known facts and guesses at the emotional truths as best anyone can. Then, in the movie's final moments, the impact of the heroism aboard United 93 becomes startlingly clear.
Taut, visceral and predictably gut-wrenching, "United 93," Paul Greengrass' already much-debated look at Sept. 11, trades in some emotional impact for authenticity, capturing the overwhelming sense of chaos surrounding that day's harrowing events. The result is a tense, documentary-style drama that methodically builds a sense of dread despite the preordained outcome. While media attention has focused on reaction to the movie's trailer, strong ratings for earlier Flight 93 TV projects suggest there will be considerable curiosity, morbid or otherwise, about "United 93" that should translate into robust box office.
Indeed, a certain myopia seems to have overtaken those wringing hands over the "Is it too soon?" question. A&E's "Flight 93," a restrained and impressive achievement on a made-for-TV movie budget, and Discovery Channel's docudrama "The Flight That Fought Back" were major successes for those cable networks.
Inevitably, seeing the same events on a theatrical canvas provides an additional wallop, though writer-director Greengrass' approach -- from the jittery camera to the dozen or so aviation and military personnel who play themselves -- feels more determined to create a "You are there" sensation than to send the audience sobbing into the night. By contrast, a key element of both "Flight 93" and "The Flight That Fought Back," which employed chilling snippets of real audio, depicted friends and relatives of the doomed passengers on the ground, a nuance this telling fastidiously avoids.
Unfolding in real time once the plane is airborne for its 91-minute flight, "United 93" opens with the terrorists rising for morning prayer and blase passengers and crew engaging in mundane chit-chat that suggests just another ordinary day.
Oscillating between the plane's occupants, military personnel at the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) and air traffic controllers in New York and Boston, Greengrass (whose credits include "Bloody Sunday") uses a hyper-natural style, chronicling the gradual dawning that the country was facing an unprecedented attack.
The controllers, in fact, at first can barely grasp that a hijacking is in progress, musing it must have been 20 years since the last one. In perhaps the starkest moment, they sit in stunned silence, mouths agape, when the second commandeered jet crashes into the World Trade Center, while an officer at NEADS bellows about being unable to defend the entire eastern seaboard with only four fighter planes.
To pound home the accuracy Greengrass sought, those participating as themselves include Ben Sliney, the Federal Aviation Administration's national operations manager, an adviser on the film who, remarkably, started in that job on Sept. 11; and NEADS Maj. James Fox.
It's roughly an hour into the film before the hijackers brutally leap into action, slaying the pilots and a random passenger. Initially terrified, the other passengers confer with loved ones on the ground via cell and air phones, with Thomas E. Burnett (Christian Clemenson) the first to recognize that their flight is another suicide mission and they must band together to retake the plane.
From the beginning, there has been something tragic and uplifting about Flight 93, the one plane that failed to strike its intended target thanks to the passengers' heroic stand. In that sense, the story became a symbol easily elevated to near-mythical status through facile catchphrases ("Let's roll") and newsmagazines eager to interview surviving relatives.
Greengrass, however, intently delivers a raw, unadorned view, letting the story's inherent drama speak for itself. That much of the cast is unidentifiable only adds to the reality he is determined to unflinchingly convey.
Even with its copious research, the film departs from prior accounts in several subtle and not-so-subtle ways, reminding us (as does a closing disclaimer) that this re-creation is just that -- based on the best available evidence, with inferences and composites constructed for dramatic effect.
Those qualifications aside, "United 93" is technically razor-sharp, from the editing and sound to John Powell's urgent but not intrusive score. Nor is the film's violence any more or less graphic than it needs to be, though something is lost in the one-sided exchanges with loved ones, as passengers come to grips with their likely fate and bid them farewell.
As for that aforementioned closing scroll, "United 93" carries a dedication to those slain on Sept. 11 and a note that the movie was in no way sponsored by United Airlines. Consider it a tribute to the film that each of those postscripts couldn't possibly feel more redundant.
You know, eventually things are going to take their natural course. Tragedies are going to happen, and art and culture are going to catch up and address them.
They also expressed resentment that two other Port Authority officers who were with their husbands at the time, but who survived, were being paid as consultants on the film. Pezullo's husband Dominick was attempting to free one of the surviving men, Will Jimeno, when he was struck by falling debris and was killed. Addressing Jimeno, Jeannette Pezzulo said, "My thing is: This man died for you. How do you do this to this family?" Ms. Pezzulo said.
Sorry, what did they do that they're so upset about?? They're consulting the filmmakers as to what had happened, that's all. Would they have preferred that they not consult anyone who was their and engage in total speculation? These movies are going to be made, and I'm sure there are people who realize this and want them to be done correctly and responsibly. And I'm sure they were only paid for their time and aren't taking a percentage of the profits.
9/11 Widows Protest Stone's 'World Trade Center'
Two women whose husbands were among the New York Port Authority officers who died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 have denounced Oliver Stone's upcoming film about the calamity, telling the Newark Star-Ledger that they don't want their children to see how their fathers died or share the last moments of their husbands' lives with moviegoers. The women, Jamie Amoroso and Jeannette Pezzulo, said that they had informed Paramount about their concerns. They also expressed resentment that two other Port Authority officers who were with their husbands at the time, but who survived, were being paid as consultants on the film. Pezullo's husband Dominick was attempting to free one of the surviving men, Will Jimeno, when he was struck by falling debris and was killed. Addressing Jimeno, Jeannette Pezzulo said, "My thing is: This man died for you. How do you do this to this family?" Ms. Pezzulo said. Jimeno told the newspaper that he felt it was important that the story be told accurately. "I never crossed the line," he said. "It's our story, too. We're also victims of this."
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The other WTC film, and the one I expect will likely raise Penelope's ire even further.
Penelope wrote:I'm still doing an internal debate about seeing this film; ultimately, I've come to the conclusion that it is essentially like any other historical film--after all, the first film about the sinking of the Titanic occurred within weeks (and starred a survivor of the disaster), and so, too, with Pearl Harbor, the first film to deal with the event was released within 6 months--so, waiting 4 1/2 years seems quaint by comparison.
Once again, my objection is my utter dislike of Greengrass' style of filmmaking. I just can't stand it--to me, it's a derivative, dead-end style--but I might buckle and see it if the word around here is good....
We've already had several films and books and TV shows dealing with 9/11. Last year, Jonathan Safran Foer wrote Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close about a nine year old who lost his father in the 9/11 attacks. The difference, I guess, is that Foer deals with the tragedy to spin fiction from it as a way of gaining insight, and the film merely recreates tragedy. I don't exactly see a point to this film other than as an excersize. We see the events unfolding before us. Okay. And? Will it add to our understanding about anything?
On the other hand, I just saw the trailer last weekend and I didn't see anything abysmal or amateurish about it.
Universal Will Not Pull 'United 93' Trailer, Despite Criticism
By SHARON WAXMAN
LOS ANGELES, April 3 — Universal Studios said on Monday that it would stick with plans to show an adrenaline-pumping trailer for "United 93," its forthcoming thriller about the passenger revolt on one of the planes hijacked on 9/11, despite qualms from some moviegoers and families of 9/11 victims.
Adam Fogelson, Universal's president of marketing, said the trailer, which was pulled from AMC Loews Lincoln Square 12 Theater in Manhattan on Saturday after complaints from patrons, would be shown only before R-rated movies or "grown-up" PG-13 ones. He said the trailer was created to give a candid sense of the film itself, which opens at the end of the month.
"The film is not sanitized or softened, it's an honest and real look" at the events on United Airlines Flight 93, Mr. Fogelson said. "If I sanitized the trailer beyond what's there, am I suggesting that the experience will be less real than what the movie itself is? We as a company feel comfortable that it is a responsible and fair way to show what's coming."
The studio's challenge — how to promote a film about the tragedy without seeming to exploit it — is likely to surface repeatedly in coming months, as a cluster of movies that touch on the events of 9/11 begins to surface.
The Tribeca Film Festival, created in response to the World Trade Center attacks, will show several such films. They include "The Saint of 9/11," a documentary about a gay priest who died in the assault, and "United 93," scheduled to open the festival on April 25. Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" will be out in August.
Studio and festival representatives have been careful to position their films as tributes to the heroes and victims of the tragedy. But some victims' relatives suggested that the "United 93" trailer should have been tested to gauge audience sensitivities, and that, particularly in Manhattan, perhaps it should not be played at all.
"A film is something you elect to go see, you pay money, and you're prepared for it," said Paula Berry, who lost her husband, David Berry, in the World Trade Center collapse and serves on the advisory board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. "A trailer is, you're sitting there to see another film, and then you see something you're unprepared for."
Tom Roger, whose 24-year-old daughter, Jean, was a flight attendant on American Flight 11, which flew into the north tower, said he wished the studio had somehow notified other 9/11 families about the trailer. "It's not the first time someone is trying to exploit the history of this event," he said. "I don't have a problem with it. But there's a warning that ought to be put in advance of the trailer. I don't know how these things can be treated in a more sensitive manner. But that's the issue."
The Discovery Channel re-enacted the events in the documentary "The Flight That Fought Back." "Flight 93," an A&E film, was broadcast in January.
Universal executives say they have gone to great pains to be sensitive to the victims' families. The film's director, Paul Greengrass — who is best known for "The Bourne Supremacy," but who also made the politically explosive docudrama "Bloody Sunday," about British troops' massacre of civilian protesters in Northern Ireland — got to know the families of most of the victims. Most cooperated in the making of the film, and they will have a chance to see the completed film this weekend, one executive said.
Some theaters are showing a promotional spot about the making of "United 93" that explains some of the thinking and methodology behind the film, which depicts events in roughly the amount of time in which they occurred.
But the trailer, currently being shown on close to 3,000 screens across the country ahead of Universal's heist caper "Inside Man," has hit a raw nerve with some.
The trailer starts quietly, with passengers preparing for Flight 93 and dramatically builds, complete with loud, pulse-pounding music, to include actual news video of a plane about to hit the south tower of the World Trade Center. It then takes the viewer inside United Flight 93 as terrorists begin the hijacking, and finally shows a passenger calling his family to inform them of the imminent takeover.
Mr. Fogelson said the trailer had been tested to gauge audiences' desire to see the film, not for taste.
One victim's widow said she was surprised that the trailer had disturbed some moviegoers. "I did not anticipate the general reaction that I'm seeing," said Sandra Felt, whose husband, Edward, a software engineer, was on United 93. "But I think of it as a good thing; it creates awareness about terrorism."
Mrs. Felt said people who were upset by the trailer should avoid the movie. But she added: "9/11 is a fact. It happened. Running away from the movie isn't going to resolve underlying factors of why we're upset by it."
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I'm still doing an internal debate about seeing this film; ultimately, I've come to the conclusion that it is essentially like any other historical film--after all, the first film about the sinking of the Titanic occurred within weeks (and starred a survivor of the disaster), and so, too, with Pearl Harbor, the first film to deal with the event was released within 6 months--so, waiting 4 1/2 years seems quaint by comparison.
Once again, my objection is my utter dislike of Greengrass' style of filmmaking. I just can't stand it--to me, it's a derivative, dead-end style--but I might buckle and see it if the word around here is good....
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
