All I Want Is the Truth

I hadn't intended to write about United 93, especially since I have no intention of going to see it. I wasn't going to avoid it because I had anything against it. At one point I'd wondered if it might be exploitive, but Paul Greengrass is a good, responsible filmmaker, and from interviews and stories I've seen, it looks like he's gone in with the best intentions. My main reason not to go see it is that I don't feel any need to see a dramatization of the events of September 11. I remember the emotions of that day just fine, thanks.

But an article in today's Washington Post raises some uncomfortable questions. Apparently, though it's not really a surprise, nobody knows enough about what actually happened on Flight 93 to fill out a feature film. And since this is, indeed, a feature film, that presented a problem.

Lloyd Levin, a "United 93" co-producer, acknowledges that the film went beyond known facts about the flight, but he justifies the movie's approach as artistically necessary. "Our mandate was not the same as the 9/11 Commission Report," Levin said. "Our mandate was to what Paul wanted to say with this movie. We're not journalists. Paul is an artist."

He called some of the questionable depictions "choices we had to make." Whether the passengers actually breached the cockpit is "a moot point, because at that point you're in the area of metaphor," he said.

If you're going to see this movie, are you going so you can appreciate the metaphor? Or are you going because you want to see what "really happened." It's all well and good to talk about art, but the vast majority of people putting their money down to see this movie are doing so to gain some insight to the truth. I'm not saying that anyone is stupid enough to believe this is a documentary and the actors they're seeing were really on the plane, but you can't have a visceral dramatization of something like this without it seeping into the audience's consciousness. Although people may know full well that this is a fictionalization, they're going to respond to it as though it's the truth. And so, for all intents and purposes, it will become "the truth."

According to The Washington Post, the film creates new events or slants those we know. We've already alluded to the passengers storming into the cockpit in the film. We don't know Flight 93's actual target, but in the movie it's made clear that it's the Capitol. The movie hijackers murder the pilot and co-pilot, but there are indications that this never happened. We don't know what kind of arguments might've occurred among the passengers before they took the attack to the hijackers, but in the movie, at least according to The Washington Post, "a passenger who argued for cooperating with the hijackers is restrained by others as the counterattack begins." During that counterattack, passengers are shown to kill two of the hijackers, but again, there's no factual support for that. Again quoting the WaPo, "Both depictions might be dramatically satisfying, but there's no evidence that either of those events occurred."

I understand the dramatic arc that a film has to make to keep its audience involved, and although I'll sometimes question the wisdom of certain decisions made to adapt a story from one medium to another, I recognize that such artistic leaps must be made. But I do have to wonder about the wisdom of taking these kinds of artistic leaps on a subject that's still in many ways an open wound. This movie will forever change the way we look at September 11. And in today's charged political and social atmosphere, I can't help but think that this isn't a good idea.