Paul Greengrass' Realtiy Flight

Bourne Supremacy and Bloody Sunday show Paul Greengrass' skill at manipulating the tensions of terrorism on screen. Yet the British director felt an unusual sense of gravitas in making United 93, the first feature film about the tragic, tumultuous events of 9/11.

"The subject impacts so many peoples' lives, there's particular responsibility to be mature and not cause gratuitous offense, but to tell the truth as you see it," says Greengrass. "We decided early on what kind of film would best fulfill those criteria-to me, that meant making a small film, not a blockbuster with movie stars. Ultimately, you've got to look at the stakes and be clear about why you're doing this film, and what you want to say. I did that with the 100-page document I wrote at the outset."

MERIN: What in particular did you want to say?

GREENGRASS: Well, it seems to me that in our respective countries, we're not in agreement about what's happened since 9/11, but I wanted to reach back to the common ground-whatever it is, it began with what happened that morning. Let's examine that in detail and see what it tells us about where we've come from.

When additional material was released, did you consider revising?

No. You gather material as comprehensively as you reasonably can within the period of time you've got to make the film and assemble experts who're willing to help you. You can't do it with actors, although actors are very important. You need cross-fertilization between actors and professional people-the 9/11 Commission, families, real pilots, air stewardesses, military folk, air traffic controllers and the families that were involved that day. Gather together in a place for several months, and explore a believable truth based on what you can know. You converse: Yeah, you ask, "Would you really have run a trolley down the aisle?" The mythology of United 93 is that stewardesses grabbed the trolley and ran forward. But real stewardesses will tell you without any doubt that couldn't have happened-they have a hard job walking a trolley down the aisle, far less running with it. You make thousands of similar judgments trying to make something that feels truthful.

I look at what's been released since we made the film and think we were pretty close.

Actors improvised in takes that lasted up to an hour. How'd you know improvised dialogue would accurately reflect what happened?

Actors were given extensive dossiers and did intense research. Some times, the actors said exactly what passengers had said-we know from family interviews.

In a film like this, you must motivate people highly. One way is to mix actors with non-actors-I mean with people who were there. If you're an air controller who was there that day, you remember what happened. When you put an actor at the desk next to that air controller, chemistry happens-basically, the actor stops acting and the non-actor starts acting. It's a magical dynamic, where it becomes real for everybody. It's really extraordinary. At a certain point, it stops being about being on a film set-they surrender themselves and it becomes real for them.

The acting had an intensity beyond normal because it was an event being relived. For instance, the military woman in the scene when the second plane hits the tower starts to cry. That woman had actually been doing that job in that room on 9/11. We used the first take of that scene.

Wow, that's really what you'd call emotional memory?.

She wasn't acting. She stopped acting and it suddenly became real. It's that quality that makes these sorts of films extraordinary.

I understand developing tension and surprise in fictional features, but how do you do that with this famous reenactment, where everyone-actors and audience alike-knows the outcome?

It requires good acting-and that demands real conviction. Lack of conviction is the enemy of intensity in performance.

You've got to get actors to believe this is the one. You've got to take them to that place, then make them believe they can do it.

Why don't you identify passengers clearly?

I didn't want to write or direct a writer's construct of the day [that] would have a scene where two passengers sit down in row 15 and say, "I see you're reading this, and when I was 14 my mother did that." That film can be done well or not-that's not my point. My point is: in reality, when we board an airplane, we have little conversation. People on United 93 were unexceptional. They were you or I, or anybody-just boarding a routine flight. What interested me was how, when facing this unimaginable event, they collectively moved from being held in abject terror at the back of the airplane to-within 20 minutes-fomenting an insurrection. That wasn't about individual characters. I mean, you recognize distinctions-get a sense of the businessman in first class, and stewardesses at the back-but this was about the interaction between hijackers and hijacked. Because that's our world today.

What interested me, too, was that by a quirk of fate, United 93 was 40 minutes late because of routine traffic control difficulties. So by the time it was hijacked, 9/11 was substantially over. It'd been half an hour since the towers were struck. Flight 77 was about a minute from striking the Pentagon. That means the United 93 passengers were the first people, I think, to inhabit our world-the post-9/11 world dominated by "what are we going to do?" We might want to avoid making decisions because it's so difficult, but those passengers didn't have that luxury. Their choice was stark, clear. They knew exactly what they were dealing with and came to believe they knew what the stakes were. The interaction between them as a group with those hijackers is our world today-and that's what this film is about.

Why'd you let us get to know the hijackers?

I wanted them to be real. I wanted them to be-something very difficult to achieve-small, inconspicuous and unformidable, yet dangerous, lethal and terrifying: two totally contradictory things. There were two hijacks on that day-the hijack of innocent people, of four airplanes leading to death and destruction on an unimaginable scale-but there was a second hijack, which is the hijack of Islam by a group of extremely zealous, pious, ideologically deluded young men who when killed, did so in the name of their god. That was one choice we made that, based on subsequently released tapes, we know we got right. They hijacked us, but they also hijacked Islam, and that's one of the terrifying things you see in this movie. We cannot avoid discussing this subject in film-because movies are important. They're one of the principal ways we talk to each other and tell stories to each other.

How do you feel about the "it's too soon" controversy?

Well, what're we saying? Is it that newspapers, magazines, television, the Internet can discuss 9/11, but movies should be disenfranchised-that we're not allowing our filmmakers to make films about 9/11? I don't understand that. That can't be right.

What's Citizen Greengrass' opinion about how we should carry on post-9/11?

Well, I don't really accept the view contained in the film-that we face immense difficulties and dangers. We do face the question "what are we going to do?" And we need to find some shared answers, fast. But, honestly, I mean, you know, I'm right there with Tolstoy. The point of doing what we do is to ask questions. It's the job of politicians to get answers. I don't mean to duck out of it. I don't think it's clear. I think we'll have to live through this a bit longer before answers start to be clear. I suspect our children will find answers. But, for sure, it'll be like this for the rest of our lives. Big problems.