Movie Review: Paul Greengrass's United 93: Guts - Page 5

Greengrass's thesis and approach may not be polemical or controversial but they are melodramatic, because he doesn't examine the Irish hooliganism (or the IRA terrorism, which since the 1960s killed about 1,800 people, including 650 civilians) as he does the British military bellicosity. This is so, even though Ivan Cooper is the movie's hero because he espouses the non-violent methods of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Greengrass, who made a British TV movie about the 15 August 1998 "Real" IRA bombing in Omagh, has never expressed anything but dismay over political violence.

From an impartial overview, however, the Northern Irish boys throwing brickbats and rocks at the British soldiers must bear some of the responsibility for the outcome that Cooper, because of the unjustified and unprincipled use of lethal force by the British, places squarely on the British. And the British are the only ones who lie about the events. In United 93 Greengrass doesn't suggest that the Islamofascist terrorists have a "side" in the conflict; he comes close to suggesting as much with respect to the IRA (though not nearly as much as Steven Spielberg does with the Palestinian terrorists in the mindless Munich). But having a valid grievance does not justify all responses, even if it explains them.

In addition, Greengrass's handling is melodramatic because we're privy to all the relevant information beforehand. Part of "being there" is not hearing or seeing everything squarely, but Greengrass keeps us informed of everything we need to know—even if only with glimpses of action and snatches of conversation—to be able to agree with him, but no more.

Yet oddly Greengrass doesn't focus his melodrama emotionally. In this interview with IndieLondon, Greengrass says that his early background was with the Granada Television news program World in Action and that seems to be his grounding in filmmaking. But I've seen greater characterization in documentaries; in Bloody Sunday (as in United 93) everyone remains equally removed from us, so that although we recognize conceptually that bad acts have occurred they don't have the kind of wallop you'd expect from a movie.

Bloody Sunday demonstrates an historical thesis formulated in retrospect, which fits oddly with Greengrass's continuous-present technique. It would thus be a mistake not to separate Greengrass's naturalistic technique from his content. The technique is supposed to be immediate, as if the crew weren't there. My boyfriend and I experienced a moment of confusion that I thought was telling: in one long shot he pointed out that people had come out to watch from the balconies of an apartment building in the background. I thought he meant that they were extras directed to watch the "violence"; he actually meant they were locals who lived in the building and who had come out to watch the filming. Greengrass works in such a way that this ambiguity helps him, if anything. If you can't distinguish his players from "real" people, then he's succeeded. But for all that, Bloody Sunday is blandly tendentious in a way United 93 is not.

Article Author: Alan Dale

Alan Dale earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. He currently works as a corporate tax attorney in Portland, Oregon.

He is the author of What We Do Best: American Movie Comedies …

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