Entertainment

Some say it's too soon; others see 9/11 account as a chance to heal

04:20 PM CDT on Friday, April 28, 2006

By CHRIS VOGNAR / The Dallas Morning News

NEW YORK – The sobs and wails came from the balcony and echoed through the theater as soon as the screen faded to black: loud, uncontrollable, heart-rending, the kinds of sounds you hear at the scene of a tragedy.

United 93, the first major movie to deal directly with the events of 9/11, had just premiered in the city hit hardest by the attacks.

Universal Pictures

Passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 charge to try to reclaim the plane from hijackers in the film United 93.

But the wails were soon replaced with a thunderous applause cascading down from the same area of the theater, vigorous and cathartic.

Both responses came from the passenger and crew family members perched in the balcony of the Ziegfeld Theatre on Tuesday night. Their loved ones died that clear September day when a group of passengers led a revolt against their hijackers and crashed the plane into a field outside Shanksville, Pa.

Five years after those unfathomable events, the movies, our most populist and escapist medium, have begun to dramatize a day that lingers in the country's collective memory as a vivid, slow-motion nightmare. United 93 opens nationwide on Friday; Oliver Stone's World Trade Center is due in August.

"It's humbling to bring this film to New York," said United 93 director Paul Greengrass before the start of the Tribeca Film Festival, where the film debuted. "It's humbling and necessary and appropriate."

Some argue it's too soon. New York audiences reacted so strongly to the United 93 trailer that some theaters pulled it from the screen this spring. But others see the 9/11 stories as a chance for catharsis, to take part in what Aristotle described as the purging of pity and fear that comes with tragedy.

Paula Berry lost her husband, David, in the Twin Towers. Ms. Berry, who now serves on the advisory council of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., cannot bring herself to see United 93.

"For me, the most painful ad macabre part of it all is what went on for my husband that day," said Ms. Berry at a 9/11 panel discussion held Wednesday afternoon in downtown Manhattan. "I can't go there. Seeing what happened to other victims is just too much."

But Ms. Berry is glad others will have the opportunity to see the film, which was made with the cooperation of and has been widely praised by United 93 victims' family members.

"I think the timing of it is fine," Ms. Berry said. "You really can't question the timing. All forms of expression have come out about 9/11, and this film is one of them. You can't hold back or keep down that expression. When is the right time? It's such a personal question."

In the weeks leading up to United 93's premiere, the attacks have roared back onto the front page with the trial of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. Just two weeks ago, the jury and the rest of America heard for the first time the tape from the plane's cockpit, an unnerving account that refocused public attention on that dark day.

But Mr. Greengrass has no problems with the scrutiny aimed at his film.

"I feel it has to justify itself to its audience," he said. "Everyone will ask some questions: Is it too soon, is it exploitative, was it made with some truthfulness? The bar is high, and it should be."

The "too soon" question has come up before. When comedian Gilbert Gottfried started telling 9/11 jokes at a Friar's roast for Hugh Hefner shortly after the tragedy, he was heckled into doing other material. Even now, five years later, 9/11 is still an open wound.

But as word trickled out that United 93 is more an honest account than a sensationalist opportunity, and that 10 percent of the opening weekend grosses will go to the United 93 Memorial Fund, the knee-jerk reactions have started to diminish.

Ann Hoog, curator of the September 11th Documentary Project for the Library of Congress, has spent the last five years leading a team of folklorists in collecting stories and images to be preserved for future generations. "It was cathartic to create a way for people to tell their stories," she said at the panel discussion. "They will be preserved at the library forever."

Ms. Hoog, who attended the United 93 premiere Tuesday, said she was "trepidacious" heading into the theater. "But I was very impressed with how it was put together," she said. "It is historically accurate, and it is not a sensational story at all. It was quite sensitive."

Which doesn't mean it's for everyone.

The very qualities that make United 93 such a powerful experience – its historical veracity and attention to detail, its refusal to pander – will likely prove too much for viewers who see movies to escape (arguably the majority of the moviegoing population). It's not a crowd-pleaser. It does not lend itself to pithy advertising blurbs about fun for the whole family or the scariest movie you'll see this year (though you'll be hard pressed to find a scarier one).

"Cinema isn't there just to entertain us," Mr. Greengrass said. "Hollywood has always had another mission, a long and humble tradition of making films that make us think and address the way the world is."

It's fitting that United 93 opened this year's Tribeca Film Festival, founded to help the downtown area get back on its feet. And it isn't the only 9/11 film at Tribeca. Others include Saint of 9/11, about a fire department chaplain who died shortly after administering last rites to a fallen firefighter, and The Heart of Steel, about a group of volunteers that banded together immediately after the attacks.

But these aren't lump-in-the-throat, knot-in-the-stomach films. They won't be parsed and debated like United 93. They don't hit the same nerve.

And it's doubtful that the film would hit quite as hard if it were made years from now. No one is about to forget 9/11. But art has a way of infusing our memories with emotional clarity.

"There's something wonderful about this being done right now," said Ms. Berry.

E-mail cvognar@dallasnews.com