The Horror...

UK readers, head to the Listen Again page for 28 Acts in 28 Minutes, go to about 14:45, and listen to James’s “Papa Christmas” routine. Great stuff. (This offer expires in a few days, so Act Now!)

Speaking of Africa, one of the BA inflight movies on the way back from Japan was Shooting Dogs, starring John Hurt as a priest caught up in the Rwandan massacre. Talk about a cheery flick to send you off to sleep. Your meal choices today are chicken, fish, and a river of blood and pain.

Another film BA might want to consider for their flights is the one I caught on Saturday, United 93. Having seen the trailer, I’d been avoiding it; I had no interest in a Hollywood thriller version of the events of 9/11, complete (no doubt) with back stories of all the passengers and patriotism cranked up to 11. But the uniformly excellent reviews convinced me otherwise, and man, were they ever right: this is an amazing achievement, given how thoroughly steeped in our consciousness its story is, and free of almost all the usual Hollywood traits.

United 93 is one of the most unbearably tense movies I’ve seen, the best in that respect since The Magdalene Sisters, and also the best air crash movie since Peter Weir’s Fearless. It captures beautifully the feeling of routine air travel in the 21st century—the snatches of overheard conversation, the pre-flight cross-checks and announcements—making what follows all the more shocking. It captures, too, the initial confusion and unfolding sense of horror of that morning (or evening, depending where you were), without looping again and again through footage from multiple angles of the collapsing twin towers. We never see them collapse: we only see what the passengers, crew, and air traffic controllers saw up to the moment that United 93 crashed into a field. The casting of many of the actual air traffic controllers and military personnel working on that morning only adds to the realism and effectiveness of the film, making the few necessary points of conjecture—the specific details of the flight itself, beyond what we know from inflight calls—seem reasonable and plausible.

It’s the kind of movie that had to be made within a few years of the event if the details were to be convincing; ten or twenty years from now, it’ll be that much harder to make one that captures the feeling of that day without being overly influenced by what resulted from it. So it’s good to have it now, even if the events it portrays still feel raw.

30 June 2006 · Film

I had studiously avoided United 93, on pretty much the same grounds that you identify. However, given your comments I might give it a go after all.
There's also a movie being trailed in the US called "World Trade Center" or something like that, featuring a gaunt Nicholas Cage.
My own feeling is that I'm not sure this is suitable material for a medium that is, at root, entertainment manufactured for commercial profit. Also, I find that everytime I see the towers come down it feels worse and worse; more disturbing and more real with each repitition. So it might not be something I'd want to watch, stretched into a 2 hr saga.

Added by Fletch on 12 July 2006.

The World Trade Center movie is directed by Oliver Stone, so I think I’ll be avoiding that one too. “The plane veered back, and to the left...”

Added by Rory on 13 July 2006.


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