Sobs at 9/11 film premiere
By Edward Helmore, Evening Standard, in New York
26 April 2006

Much of the audience at last night's premiere of United 93 was stunned into silence, while the families of the victims broke into sobs and wails at the end of Paul Greengrass's remarkable reconstruction of the 9/11 flight whose passengers fought back.

The subdued opening to Robert de Niro's Tribeca Film Festival was a sombre affair. Many of the victims' families had expressed approval for a film that depicts the events aboard the San Francisco-bound flight 93 as faithfully as fragmentary cockpit tapes and phone messages allow, but they seemed unprepared for the gut-wrenching final scene in which the doomed jet plunges into the ground at 500 miles per hour.

United 93 is the first big-screen take on the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is a starkly told story of a grim morning that needs no false dramatisation.
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Sobs at 9/11 film premiere

Despite misgivings about whether it is still too soon to depict that day in close-up cinematic detail, Greengrass's horrifically violent film has received almost universal rave reviews in the US. Greengrass retells the story with the tautness and an attention to detail that he brought to Bloody Sunday.

Even with its foregone conclusion, the director's meticulous attention to detail helps to sustain a knot of anxiety in the stomach for the duration of film.

The day's events unfold with grim realism: against the backdrop of sunny skies and warm winds, the tense purposefulness of the hijackers is pitched against the optimism of the crew and passengers about to board the plane.

Then, as one plane after another is hijacked, the bewildered authorities struggle to comprehend an assault for which there is no precedent. The mundane routines of air travel are turned into horror and disbelief.

Passengers have their throats cut, buildings are crashed into, the authority of the world's only superpower is undone - the president is nowhere to be found; the nation's fighter jets are unarmed.

A scene from the film

The director captures the surreal quality of the situation, with no one quite able to absorb the scale of the problem. In an attempt to convey the incomprehensible to his superiors in Washington, one US military commander repeats, 'Sir, this is a real-world situation.'
Greengrass trains his dispassionate eye on the passengers of United Airlines flight 93 who, through an accident of delay, are in the air when they learn of their intended fate as participants in a kamikaze mission.

The director's tightly scripted, precise style of movie-making lends itself to the claustrophobia of bad travel, and to the desperation of the passengers' courageous counter-attack.
Greengrass's film-making also takes its toll on the senses. This is not a good film for anyone prone to airsickness or fearful of turbulence. The in-flight action for United 93 is so unforgiving that even some of the cast say they now hate getting on a plane.

Responding to concern that it is still too soon to dramatise the tragedy, the director says: 'We all agree that what has happened in the world goes back to the morning of September 11, and if we're going to find some consensus, maybe we need to go back to that place, tell that story again, see if we can't find some wisdom in it.'

His mission, he told the audience, 'was to try to address what happened. Remembering this is painful but it can also be inspiring.'

Relatives and friends of the victims said they had been reassured by Greengrass that the terrorists would not be treated as heroes and the passenger uprising would be treated as a collective act of resistance.

Earlier this year, a made-for-TV docudrama about the flight was criticised by families who felt the passengers who were not directly involved in storming the cockpit were ignored.
United 93 is only the first in series of forthcoming films to deal with the the events of five years ago. The next - Oliver Stone's $60million World Trade Center, starring Nicolas Cage and telling the story of a New York firefighter - is due for release this year.

Families pressure lawmaker on 9/11 memorial
By Kimberly Hefling


Rep. Charles Taylor is concerned about project's cost.
WASHINGTON — Family members of those killed on United Flight 93 are urging a North Carolina congressman to lift his hold on funding for a memorial planned for the Pennsylvania site where the plane crashed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Nearly a dozen family members are scheduled to meet with their members of Congress today to encourage them to sign a letter that asks Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C., to support $10 million for the project.

Taylor, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Interior Department, has blocked millions in funding for the project in the past two years, and has expressed opposition to funding it when it comes up again before his committee May 3, said John Scofield, the House Appropriations Committee spokesman.

The White House has requested $5 million for the nearly 1,700-acre site in remote western Pennsylvania as part of a larger spending bill.

Taylor issued a three-page statement Tuesday in which he expressed concern about the project's size and cost. He said a cost-sharing arrangement had been worked out under which Pennsylvania would make a large donation, but "to my knowledge, the state of Pennsylvania has not appropriated any funds."

Kate Philips, a spokeswoman for Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, said Tuesday that the state has committed $10 million.

The flight was en route to San Francisco when it was brought down near Shanksville, Pa. The 33 passengers, seven crew members and four hijackers on board died.