comment #1

Karen Foster says ...

Although, United 93 is laudable because it is built around an event that means so much to our country, isn't it also a work of fiction?

The movie is over 90 minutes long, but we have less than 20 minutes of transcripts of the audio of what happened on the plane that day, therefore the overwhelming majority of the dialog and behavior in the movie is made up.

In some ways it is about as 'real' as "The Blair Witch Project".

I want to honor 9/11 victims too, however I find this trend to mix in a little bit of fact with a lot of fiction and then present and/or treat it as if it is 100% fact (especially to the point where one has "more of a connection" to those events as a result) is EXTREMELY disturbing.

And I wonder if that difficulty to tell the difference between fact and fiction isn't as much of a danger to democracy as the terrorists are?

comment #2

JD says ...

Karen, I would say the ratio of pure fact to hypothesis in United 93 is about 2 to 1 (keep in mind, about a third of the movie has nothing to do with flight 93), which is much better than pretty much any other historical or fact-based movie I can think of.

One thing is clear: Paul Greengrass isn't distorting known facts for dramatic effect. He's relying entirely on fact whenever possible and filling in the blanks whenever necessary. But his intent is clearly to create a sense of authenticity and I think he succeeded admirably. There's a lot more to truth than facts and statisitics. United 93 included all the widely known information that we've received in news reports and A LOT more. The movie achieves a level-headed sense of human behaviour and a viscersal sense of that event that was 100% missing from the generally maudlin, propagandistic news reports of that day. I really can't see how any thinking person could see United 93 and have a problem with it.

Do you have a problem with the historical hypothesizing of other historical films? It seems that, if a movie deals with an event from 40 or 50 years ago, people are content for just the general facts to be accurate, but if a movie deals with 9/11, everything has to be accurate, right down to the color of the characters' socks. Some details really are irrelevant and I think United 93 got all the important ones right.

comment #3

Mike Gebert says ...

"The movie is over 90 minutes long, but we have less than 20 minutes of transcripts of the audio of what happened on the plane that day."

Which (if you'd read any of the reviews) you'd know is not that far off from the total proportion of the movie which takes place on the plane. Most of the movie takes place in other places such as control towers, NORAD, etc. Where actions were also fairly well documented.

But of course the whole point of calling it "fiction" is not to say that the filmmakers went out on a wild limb and conjectured that certain things such as coffee service, requests for pillows, etc. may have happened on Flight 93. Of course, it's also possible that the whole passenger crew got together and had an orgy or composed an opera in Tagalog, but it seems a reasonable choice to depict them as doing what happens on ten bazillion flights a day until they were hijacked-- reading, chatting, doing nothing. But casting doubt on the dramatization of such piddly stuff is meant to be the thin end of the wedge toward casting doubt on the heroism of Flight 93-- because certain people can't abide the thought of heroes in America. They can't abide the thought that America fought back and thus had something to fight for against Islamic terrorists.

And so the "fiction" of dramatizing coffee service on Flight 93 becomes "as much a danger to democracy as the terrorists are." Riiiiiight, Karen.

comment #4

KarenFoster says ...

"...it seems a reasonable choice to depict them as doing what happens on ten bazillion flights a day until they were hijacked-- reading, chatting, doing nothing. But casting doubt on the dramatization of such piddly stuff is meant to be the thin end of the wedge toward casting doubt on the heroism of Flight 93-- because certain people can't abide the thought of heroes in America."

Patriotism should not be an excuse for trying to make fiction into fact.

That is the first step on the path to the destruction of democracy and the implementation of the totalitarian lifestyle that we saw under the Soviets.

United 93 is fictional. It happens to be based (and apparently loosely based since most of what is in the movie has no proof as to whether it occurred in the real life incident) on a factual event, but it is not a biography or a documentary.

The movie was designed to evoke a certain response via dialogue and situations that were imagined by its writers. The closeness of the passengers. The exact words spoken and facial responses, etc.

Let us mourn the actual events of the tragedy instead of making up stuff just to evoke a more maudlin response from the public. Isn't the whole truth better than something that’s half true and half fiction?

comment #5

Mike Gebert says ...

Mayhbe you should go see the movie so you know what you're talking about, instead of discussing a movie that bears little or no resemblance, except in the vaguest theoretical sense, to the one that was actually made.

comment #6

sean says ...

Um, Mike, perhaps you could point to which of her statements were inaccurate? Are you claiming knowledge regarding actual words spoken aboard the plane? On the other hand, you have, within a few paragraphs, overtly twisted things she said into things you could shoot down. Tsk-tsk.

"But of course the whole point of calling it "fiction" is not to say that the filmmakers went out on a wild limb and conjectured that certain things such as coffee service, requests for pillows, etc. may have happened on Flight 93."

No, the whole point of pointing out that it's fiction is that people keep trying to use it as a rallying cry "You MUST see this movie! It's what really happened!" when, in fact, it is a fictionalized version of what happened, imagined by a screenwriter based on as many facts as are positively known. There is a distinction.

"They can't abide the thought that America fought back and thus had something to fight for against Islamic terrorists."

This sentence is nonsense. Not in sentiment, just in execution.

Specific to Owen Gleiberman and Jeff Wells: If you don't understand why a lot of people were not interested in this movie, you are too out of touch with America to be critics.

comment #7

sean says ...

"We don't expect serious journalists to soft-pedal the news."

We do if we've been paying attention to "serious journalists" in the past few years.

But I would concede the point that people expect that from journalists and explicitly don't want it from movies.

comment #8

Mike Gebert says ...

"On the other hand, you have, within a few paragraphs, overtly twisted things she said into things you could shoot down"

She's the one who leaped from "what happened on the plane is conjecture" to "And I wonder if that difficulty to tell the difference between fact and fiction isn't as much of a danger to democracy as the terrorists are?" Not me.

But if I'm wrong about my guess that Karen is casting doubt on United 93 because she doubts the official version of events generally, she is free to say so.