United 93 UPDATED

I saw United 93 on Friday afternoon. It was an unusual experience. The movie was shown in one of the two big theaters at the local cineplex. This was hardly necessary as there were fewer than forty people attending. Perhaps the audiences were larger for the evening showings. The audience was an interesting mix of ages, genders, and races. There were a high number of people who were, like myself, there alone.

Upon first entering the cineplex, I wished for my wife's company. We don't often go to the movies, but it is always a fun night out. By the end of the movie, I was I glad that she had not come.

As a movie, United 93 has some quirks that I cannot decide are mildly annoying or simply necessary. First, a handheld camera is utilized for the entire movie, giving the movie the strong feel of a documentary. I have never been much of a fan of herky-jerky cinematography. At the same time, it made the film feel both detached and more real.

Second, the passengers and crew lack characterization. At first, I was surprised at this. Being a long-time consumer of disaster movies, I have come to expect certain things regarding the depiction of the victims of the disaster. They should be seen before boarding the plane, and details of family, career, personality traits, and the like should be quickly but purposely painted in order to make their pain more real when the moment of crisis comes. This was largely lacking. Yes, we see the characters prepare for boarding, settling in their seats, and choosing their meals, and we overhear random but anonymous comments from the passengers, but we never really learn who these people are. In fact, we don't spend much time with the passengers until after the midway point in the movie.

I have thought about this for a couple of days. I think this was done to deliberately suggest that each passenger was not a hastily drawn character-sketch (indeed who of the victims' families would be happy with a lifetime boiled down to sixty seconds of characterization), but that each of the passengers could have been one of us or one of our loved ones. Furthermore, the very wise decision to forgo professional actors lends this movie a very powerful reality. A reality that is very easy to make one's own. The passengers look like people we know, like our family members, or like ourselves. For one brief moment, I saw the face of my mother in the face of one of the passengers. That is the whole of the argument of the film like this. These were not characters in a movie, they were real people that were brutally murdered five years ago. This was very effectively done.

Most of what I have since read concerns whether American's are ready for such a movie; is it to soon for a 9/11 movie? I don't know the answer to that question. I do know that we cannot forget what happened that day. What happened that day should have shaken us. It should have re-shaped our thinking. It should have rededicated us to the defense of our nation and to the principles for which it stands. Much of that dedication has become passe today.

As I shared on Friday, I was uncomfortable seeing the movie at a house of entertainment. One of the pundits at MSNBC.com (I am too lazy to look up the link) refused to see it at all because they did not see it as a fit subject for entertainment. Neither do I. I did not get snacks, though many did. The movie was not entertainment. I left the theater, bewildered to walk back into a world of popping corn and children running with hands full of Twizzlers and Coke. Ultimately, that is point of a movie like United 93. It was the normal, everyday life of Americans that was attacked on that day. We can and should go on living that life, but we must never forget how that life has been given to us or that the battle continues.

That is why I teach history.

Peace

Update: this article says what I said, only better: Opinion Journal
Here is the link to the MSNBC story that I was too lazy to look up yesterday: Test Pattern
No, the irony did not escape me that my post "Unfinished Work", in which I criticized showing a slapstick comedy in the theater next to a film as serious as United 93, was published right next to my post "Beans, Beans..."