With the end of the academic year at Milligan College and other little matters taking care of themselves, here’s the end of a long drought of posting. I hope I can get back in the groove of The Culture Beat and stay there for regular postings. If you think that’s a good thing, I’d love to hear from you. If you don’t think it’s a good thing — well, sorry.
“United 93” is a remarkable and disturbing movie. I don’t think it’s for everyone, at least not yet, and I’m not sure I need to see it again. That remark has nothing to do with its quality: it is a well-made film. It has to do with whether I want to risk emotional breakdown or, at the other end of the spectrum, risk desensitization. But the movie was the stepping stone into this week’s column for the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press:
In the new film “United 93,” the first voices we hear are of men praying in Arabic. They are in a hotel room: a couple of them kneeling, their faces to the floor. Another is finishing packing; another is shaving his body.
These are the terrorists who will take over United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, and eventually ram it into a Pennsylvania field, killing all 44 people on board. This was the only one of four hijackings that day that did not reach its intended target. The others hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
The terrorists on United 93 probably planned to crash the plane into another Washington target – maybe the White House, maybe the Capitol (as the film suggests) – but the passengers fought back.
“United 93,” the first major studio film dealing with the Sept. 11 attacks, is a harrowing film because we already know what will happen and we know the story is not fiction. My heart pounded for almost the entire movie, which unwound the events of the day in real time.
While the ending was not in question, the choices of the film makers, led by director and writer Paul Greengrass, were. How would they handle the details of what we know and how would they fill the blanks of what we don’t?
This much is clear from the first moment: they did not skirt the religious issues.
“It’s important to see what happened that day,” said Lesley Burbridge-Bates of Motive Entertainment, a public-relations firm working with the movie. “It was not just political or cultural. There are deeply religious ties to the event. It’s important for people in American culture to see how spiritual this is.”
Throughout the story, particularly at critical moments, we see the hijackers praying or appealing to God, including the horrible instant when one of them declares “In the name of God!” as he slices the throat of a flight attendant.
In the final tense seconds before the last struggle begins, the cameras switch between the terrorists, who are reciting Muslim prayers, and some of the passengers who are reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
“No one is saying everyone on that plane is a Christian or Jew – that there’s the faith of America and then there are the Muslims,” Burbridge-Bates said. “The film just tells the story. The key is to look at the situation and deal with what’s been done. How do you handle it?”
She’s right in saying the film focuses on telling the story rather than offering answers, and that was the correct choice. Any film could offer only sketchy suggestions at best, useless clichés and stereotypes at worst.
So instead of giving answers, Greengrass (pictured here) forces questions. He understands that while the evils of Sept. 11 are easy to identify, the underlying reasons and motives are not.
One of the strengths of this film, for example, is that it portrays the terrorists as real men rather than as faceless monsters. Just before boarding the plane, one of them makes a call on his cell phone and says in Arabic, “I love you.”
How could such a man do such a terrible deed? What pushed him? Religion obviously played a major part, but will we ever know how or why?
“What drove them to do something like that?” Taneem Aziz, leader of the Muslim Community of Northeast Tennessee, asked this week. “I don’t know. I can’t be in their minds. So I cannot justify what they did. As a Muslim, I cannot hate people. I can hate some actions, but not people.”
But while the attacks can never be justified, Aziz believes they can and should be explained, to understand what has driven some Muslims to hatred and terrorism.
“A lot of political reasons have wrapped themselves around religion, or vice versa,” he said. “And that’s the crux. We try to find out a cause, but we are only looking at the symptom.”
First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 13 May 2006.
