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April 30, 2006
Flight 93
I want to see it; like Van Der Leun, I'll probably go alone.
. . . [O]n that day, there was as we knew, and now as we have seen, another group of American men and women who, when they found out what was happening and what was to be their likely fate, also took that fate in their own hands and came on, fighting to thwart or reverse that fate, until the last moment of their lives. Ordinary people in an extraordinary situation finding the ordinary courage to resist and to fight against the evil that appeared among them.
That's the theme and the pace and the action of "United 93:" How ordinary people, at first strangers to each other, found the courage to act together in the face of certain death.
Despite the whines and the cavils of the weak and the vile and the corrupt among us, "United 93" has no "message."
Despite the rising and continuing attempts to cheapen the film from the spiritually and politically bankrupt that batten off America, "United 93" has no politics.
You don't "review" this film if you have an ounce of soul left to you. You watch it.
"United 93," from the first frame to the last, simply and clearly lets you see what happened high in the air on that day. It is, as the phrase on the poster says, "The plane that did not reach its target." Instead, it reached something unintended and much higher. It became and will remain a legend; an integral part of the tapestry of the American myth from which we all draw what strength remains to us, and, in the future, will surely need to draw upon even more deeply. Like the best of our legends, it arises out of our ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
"United 93" lets you see, without footnotes or the faintest tinge of an agenda of any sort, how ordinary people in one of the most banal yet dangerous modern settings, refused at the last to be cowed or frightened and, knowing full well that all was probably up for them, still fought to save their lives or, in the end, thwart the designs that evil had brought on board.
[...]
In a film of brief but telling moments, there's one moment towards the end where you see one man reach down and remove his seatbelt. In that moment you can sense that he goes from being a passive victim to a man who has decided to stand up and engage the evil that has taken control of his life; to take the controls back from thugs and the cut-throats and the mumbling fanatics of a wretched and burnt-out god.
That man, like the firemen who went up the stairs, and his fellow passengers who attacked up the aisle in those last moments, became, in the end, one of the Americans who decided on that day and the days that followed, to stand up. Soon after, that man and all the others on United 93 went into the smoke of that fire in the field.
"United 93" . . . has no message, but if you -- as I finally did -- choose to go, it will pose you a question: What would you do, an ordinary person in an extraordinary moment when life and death, good and evil, were as clear as the skies over America on September 11? Will you, as so many of our fellow citizens yearn to do these days, stay seated? Or will you stand up?
On one of our days to come, there will be another test. You'd best have an answer prepared.
Read the rest of his post; it's a powerful piece of writing.
There's a storm coming, one that will require each of us to answer Van Der Leun's question. Have you thought about your response?
Posted by Mike Lief at April 30, 2006 03:59 AM
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Comments
I am going to see this movie. When I do, I am going to remember my countrymen who were murdered by Islamic nazis.
I am then going to think about the war with Muslims that must come quickly before the Muslim nuts get their hands on a nuclear weapon. Muslims seem to just go around the world killing anyone they can't get along wiith.
Posted by: Red Stater at April 30, 2006 09:15 AM