United We Stand
Posted on | May 17, 2006 at 10:32 pm | Comments Off
Last weekend I saw United 93. As I knew it would be, it was a hard movie to watch and a hard movie to talk about. I don’t usually get very emotional when watching movies (except for that one time at Deuce Bigelow), so the effect it had on me did surprise me a bit. But I’m really glad I saw it. I think everyone should see it. It goes beyond any partisan political ideologies and shows the strength that unites us as Americans and as civilized humans. Those people on that plane did what they had to do, even though they knew what the probable outcome would be, and I’d like to think that any of us are capable of the same.
It worked out well having many people who were in the thick of things on the ground that day play themselves. Though it must’ve been really difficult for them to relive it. The one quibble I had is that it seemed like the one passenger shown acting somewhat cowardly had a distinctly European accent. That blunted the message for me a bit.
The theater-going experience itself was not very pleasant, which added to the tension for me. There was something wrong with the sound – a persistent crackling/static like there was a blown speaker or something. It was even hard to hear some of the dialog. At one point, I thought maybe it was a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers to give the movie more of a documentary feeling, like the handheld camerawork. But no, the static was there even through the end credit music. There weren’t a lot of people in the theater, and no one else seemed to be bothered by it. I complained about it right at the beginning, but nothing was done and no refunds were offered afterwards. I complained again at the end and they asked if I wanted my money back and I said “No, just fix it please for the next group”.
Another thing that I found odd was that there were no previews before the movie, and they even had signs up warning about that, saying the movie would start exactly at the scheduled time. Well, yeah, there were no coming attractions, but there was still the 20 minutes of commercials and promotionals before it. Seems like if you’re going to be sensitive enough to not show previews for other movies, you should also not show the commercials. But of course commerce wins out over sensitivity every time.
Latre.