United 93

[Sal]

i saw it last night.
when it finished i was left speechless.
i felt like i was hit in the head with a hammer. there's not many movies capable of this. in fact, i have trouble recalling any other title that made me feel similarly, not recently anyway.
i think the much overused adjective "awesome" is very much in place here. awesome as in inspiring awe. shocking. frightening. and deeply disturbing.

the point of view of the plane's passengers, as well as of the flight control towers (how helpless they are with all the high-tech radar equip they have), the para-documentary fashion of narration and camera work, the anonymity of the characters (strengthened by the lack of familiar actors), the emotions devoid of cheap sentimentalism and unhealthy pathos - there don't seem to be any weak points to the movie really.

but the aspect that truly, madly, deeply gripped me was the way the terrorist-hijackers were depicted. no devilish smiles, no inhuman cruelty, no over-the-top fanaticism. the terrorists are almost as terrified as the passengers, they make mistakes, they struggle against their own doubts and weaknesses. it is scary to realise that there is something profoundly heroic in the hijackers, just like in the passengers who try to resist.

and to top all this - there's the prayers. both the passengers and the terrorists pray to their God, or rather to THE God. the simultaneous prayer sequence is the film's emotional center of gravity, and if it doesn't make an impression on you, then i don't know what does.


p.s. i don't think this was discussed already, at least the search didn't show anything. and that's strange since it opened in Poland a few months after the civilized world, i reckon.