Jim Emerson / April 6, 2006

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Last week, in an attempt to go ever-so-slightly against the grain, I wondered "aloud" (bloggedly speaking) here if the release of the 9/11 film, "United 93" wasn't indeed a bit "too soon," as some have claimed -- not because the events might be too traumatic for some to revisit (or because some people are reportedly booing the trailer, attached to "Inside Man"), but because there's still too much we don't know about what actually happened to, and aboard, Flight 93 that day. Much as I hate (in principle) the usual speculation about what a movie will or will not be like, when most of us writing about it have not seen it, I thought it relevant to point out how much of the story remains unknown or withheld from the public. That said, I think there is a whole range of responsible and irresponsible approaches to this material, and we won't know what path the makers of "United 93" have taken until the movie is released, April 28.

Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere went so far as to (belatedly) suggest that the film show three possible scenarios:

If a movie is going to try and tell the truth about a real event, I believe it should stick as closely as possible to what is actually known, and if certain things about this event aren't crystal clear then that should be acknowledged and somehow worked into the film.

With this theory in mind, it hit me this morning how "United 93" (Universal, 4.28), Paul Greengrass's 9/11 thriller, should best unfold. Since nobody knows what specifically happened during the last few minutes before United #93 slammed into muddy ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the best way is to end it, I feel, is with three different scenarios a la "Rashomon."

Now, in theory at least, I appreciate this idea -- but I'm not making the movie. But I do like the idea of incorporating the mysterious, unknown and perhaps unknowable elements of the story into the film.

A Scanners reader made a comparison to "All the President's Men," in which Deep Throat was depicted (played by Hal Holbrook -- who also guest starred on last week's episode of "The Sopranos"), although his identity was not revealed. That film, however, was told from the point of view of reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, based on their subjective version of events in their best-selling book. "Rashomon" was a study in contrasting accounts by various participants or eyewitnesses. But there are no eyewitnesses to give us their views of what happened aboard Flight 93. And the eyewitnesses on the ground disagree as much as the characters in "Rashomon": some say the plane crashed, some say it was shot down (or otherwise brought down) by a fighter jet or a missile, some say the crash site itself was too neat and that the debris was spread too widely for the plane to have hit the ground before an air explosion....

Wells proposes three endings:

One, passengers burst into the cockpit, grapple with terrorists and plane goes down over a struggle for the controls. Two, passengers charge but are kept out of the cockpit, and then panicky terrorists take the plane into a suicide dive to keep them from taking back the plane. And three, passengers rush the hijackers but before anything can happen a white military plane hits United #93 with a missile, smoke pours into the cabin and the disabled plane goes down.

Well, once you get started it's hard to know when to stop. In the Official Version of events, as we know them know, the flight recorders show that the passengers did not enter the cockpit. We don't know exactly why the plane went down, whether there was some sort of explosion first, why the crash site looked like a hole with debris dumped into it (according to the first eyewitnesses), why there were so few airplane fragments at the site while others were found far away.

There are plenty of other scenarios that could stand alongside these three: The hijackers could have lost control of the plane while attempting aerial maneuvers to discombobulate the rebelling passengers. Someone could have exploded something aboard the plane. The F-16 pilots dispatched to intercept Flight 93 say they considered ramming the plane because some fighters were not armed with missiles. Some people (including Cleveland Mayor Michael H. White, a statement made on 9/11) even claimed the flight never crashed at all, but landed at Cleveland Hopkins Airport after a bomb threat was reported. Those are just a few of the theories -- some more likely than others -- still out there, neither conclusively proven or disproven.

I'm reminded of Robert Altman's superb film of the one-man play, "Secret Honor" (subtitled "A Political Myth") in which the great Phillip Baker Hall plays Richard Nixon on his final drunken night in the White House. The premise (and I won't go into details because you should see it if you haven't yet) is that Nixon's resignation was an act of "secret honor" -- of defiance against certain powers, rather than a capitulation to the pressure of being impeached. Do I think this is what really happened (any more than I think the various conspiracies sketched out in Oliver Stone's "JFK" really happened)? No. But it's a fascinating game of historical "What If?"

Phillip Kelley of Valley Village, CA, writes of "United 93":

...if the film itself is handled in a way that shows these people involved as humans, and doesn't try to make them out to be "heroes" for the sake of patriotism, then I see no problem with the film. If however the film is going to use images that are already engraved into our mind to manipulate an emotional resonance (as the trailers have been doing), then I do see a problem. If the search for truth within one of the biggest tragedies we've faced is to manipulate and exaggerate the character of those people on that plane... if everyone on that plane within this movie somehow finds it in themselves to do the right thing, then I'll see a problem with this movie.

I do see a problem with making a big deal out of it before the film has had a chance to make it's statement. One thing that we should not instill in people is the idea to fear and perhaps hate something that could be a great piece of moving and thought-provoking art, and we certainly don't want to cause fear within those artists that have something to say, nor should we silence them all in order to stop the ones that do it to make a little money on the side.

I fully agree, the movie will have to stand on its own merits, but I do think it's legitimate to pose skeptical questions now about the artistic (as well as socio-political) obligations of dealing with this kind of material.

But I also agree with David Cronenberg:

If you're talking about censorship, and what things should be shown and what things shouldn't be shown, I've said that as an artist you have no social responsibility whatsoever. Once again, it's a willing amnesia. You have to forget for the moment what the effect of what you're doing might be, or what the revelations that you come up with might suggest, or what the implications of them are. Of course, no artist works in a vacuum, you're working in a social context ultimately. So you have to balance those things. You have to deal with the consequences of what you've done.

It's the filmmakers who are taking the considerable risk of looking stupid by making this film before more facts are known. But that's a commercial and artistic risk they are fully entitled to take.

Imagine what would have happened if NBC had made its "rescue of Private Jessica Lynch" movie according to the original Official Myth -- before it was revealed that the great rescue was, in the words of a BBC expose, "one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived." (The movie, "Saving Jessica Lynch," was broadcast November 9, 2003, only seven months after her April rescue.) By the time the movie was made, we even heard from Private Lynch herself, who said of the Pentagon's efforts to spin her life into heroic war propaganda: "They used me to symbolize all this stuff. It's wrong. I don't know why they filmed [my rescue] or why they say these things."

An awful lot of propaganda and pseudo-patriotic propaganda has built up around 9/11. I hope the makers of "United 93" -- and "World Trade Center" and any other of the inevitable fictionalized films based on 9/11 -- can deal with their subjects creatively and responsibly, and avoid pandering to or viscerally exploiting audience emotions.