Will: Your civic duty: See 'United 93'
George Will, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
Sunday, May 07, 2006
In most movies made to convey dread, the tension flows from uncertainty
about what will happen. In "United 93," terror comes from knowing
exactly what will happen. People who associate cinematic menace with
maniacs wielding chain saws will find that there can be an almost
unbearable menace in the quotidian -- in the small talk of passengers
waiting in the boarding area with those who will murder them, in the
routine shutting of the plane's door prior to push-back from the gate at
Newark Airport on Sept. 11.
But two uncertainties surrounded "United 93": Would it find an audience?
Should it?
It has found one, which is remarkable, given that in 2005 most
moviegoers -- 57 percent -- were persons 12 to 29 years old. Twenty-nine
percent were persons 12 to 24. These age cohorts do not seek shattering,
saddening experiences to go with their popcorn. In its first weekend,
"United 93" was the second most watched movie, with the top average
gross per theater among major releases. It was on 1,795 screens, and 71
percent of viewers were 30 or older.
To the long list of Britain's contributions to American cinema --
Charles Chaplin, Bob Hope, Cary Grant, Stan Laurel, Deborah Kerr, Vivien
Leigh, Maureen O'Hara, Ronald Colman, David Niven, Boris Karloff, Alfred
Hitchcock and others -- add Paul Greengrass, writer and director of
"United 93." He imported into Hollywood the commodity most foreign to
it: good taste. This is especially shown in the ensemble of unknown
character actors and non-actors who play roles they know -- a real pilot
plays the pilot, a former flight attendant plays the head flight
attendant -- and several persons who play the roles they played on 9/11.
Greengrass' scrupulosity is evident in the movie's conscientious,
minimal and minimally speculative departures from the facts about the
flight that were assembled for the "The 9/11 Commission Report." This is
emphatically not a "docu-drama" such as Oliver Stone's execrable "JFK,"
which was "history" as a form of literary looting in which he used just
enough facts to lend a patina of specious authenticity to tendentious
political ax-grinding.
A New York Times story on the "politics of heroism" deals with the
question of whether the movie is "inclusive." Well, perhaps "United 93"
did violate some egalitarian nicety by suggesting that probably not all
the passengers were equally heroic. Amazingly, no one has faulted the
movie for ethnic profiling: All the hijackers are portrayed as young,
fervently devout Islamic males. Report Greengrass to the U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights.
In a movie as spare and restrained as its title, the only excess is the
suggestion, itself oblique, that the government responded even more
confusedly that morning than was to be expected. Most government people,
like the rest of us, were in the process of having their sense of the
possible abruptly and radically enlarged.
Going to see "United 93" is a civic duty because Samuel Johnson was
right: People more often need to be reminded than informed. After an
astonishing 56 months without a second terrorist attack, this nation
perhaps has become dangerously immune to astonishment. The movie may
quicken our appreciation of the measures and successes -- many of which
must remain secret -- that have kept killers at bay.
The editors of National Review were wise to view "United 93" in the
dazzling light still cast by a Memorial Day address, "The Soldier's
Faith," delivered in 1895 by a veteran of Ball's Bluff, Antietam and
other Civil War battles. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said why
understanding that faith is important:
"In this snug, over-safe corner of the world . . . we may realize that
our comfortable routine is no eternal necessity of things, but merely a
little space of calm in the midst of the tempestuous untamed streaming
of the world, and in order that we may be ready for danger. . . . Out of
heroism grows faith in the worth of heroism."
The message of the movie is: We are all potential soldiers. And we all
may be, at any moment, at the war's front, because in this war the front
can be anywhere.
The hinge on which the movie turns are 13 words that a passenger speaks,
without histrionics, as he and others prepare to rush the cockpit,
shortly before the plane plunges into a Pennsylvania field. The words
are: "No one is going to help us. We've got to do it ourselves." Those
words not only summarize this nation's situation in today's war, but
also express a citizen's general responsibilities in a free society.
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/search/content/editorial/stories/05/7will_edit.html
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