United 93


At the end of ‘Hamlet’, when the stage is clogged with corpses, Horatio asks his betters to ‘Give order that these bodies/High on a stage be placed to the view/And let me speak to the yet unknowing world/How these things came about.’ After disaster, the story must be told, the dead held up as witness and tribute in the hope of making sense of the obscene. The power of ‘United 93’ – British director Paul Greengrass’s docudrama-style re-creation of the hijacked flight that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on September 11 2001 – lies in its status as a memorial for those killed, and perhaps as a cathartic experience for a still-traumatised American psyche. Indeed, it should probably be seen as an emotional rather than an intellectual endeavour: the world, after all, is far from unknowing about these things, and the film’s ability to shed new light on them – let alone how they came about – is questionable.

‘United 93’ follows, in roughly real time, the 81-minute flight that left Newark minutes before the World Trade Center was hit. In a naturalistic mode similar to the one Greengrass used for 2002’s ‘Bloody Sunday’, we see the banal chitchat of passengers and crew arriving at the airport, and the beginning of the day at FAA headquarters and several other aviation control centres, including a military base in upstate New York. (Around half the film takes place off the plane, with some ground staff playing themselves.) As news of one, and then multiple hijackings filters through, the ineffectual bewilderment of the response on the ground becomes clear. In the air, we and the four terrorists await their moment.

The on-board environment is realised with exceptional potency, the cinema transformed into an extension of the cabin through tight compositions and muscular sound design. The low, insistent score and ambient thrum of the engines have a gut impact that combines with the awful, suffusive dramatic irony to make the first half almost unwatchable, while the spatial lurches that signify the final struggle for control are truly sickening. As an exercise in immersive cinema, the film is closer to Gus Van Sant’s ‘Last Days’ or Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s ‘Tropical Malady’ than conventional narrative movies.

Yet the claustrophobic here-and-nowness that makes for such a powerful viewing experience is problematic in a film with aspirations to wider resonance. Greengrass has claimed that a close examination of flight UA93 can reveal ‘the DNA of our times’; but the ‘real’ aesthetic, however powerful, belies the fact that what we see is almost entirely conjecture, however conscientiously researched (the victims’ families were closely involved). At the same time, the self-imposed limits of space and time preclude the unravelling of the event’s genetic strands: it makes guesses about the anatomy of a murder rather than investigating its evolutionary context. We know what to expect because we know the story, not because the film proposes an argument about the forces in motion that resulted in this crisis.

When the hijack finally comes, it comes as a perverse relief – partly because we have always known that it must happen, partly because it is the sort of thing that we see on cinema screens all the time. Once the violence starts, our status as fellow-passengers is harder to maintain; faced with such a horrific, alien ordeal, we thankfully become spectators again. Not that those on board become action heroes; Greengrass is careful not to privilege any individual’s behaviour and even draws implicit, mutually humanising parallels between victims and hijackers (in their use of prayer and their hesitant, ruthless violence). Some of the rhetoric that has grown up around flight UA93 presents the storming of the cockpit as some sort of principled decision to ground the plane before it can be used as a weapon – a grand-scale version of taking a bullet for the President. Here, the fighting back is presented, entirely plausibly and sympathetically, as a last, desperate attempt to live; not self-sacrifice but self-defence.

Of course, the danger that hapless deaths will be co-opted to militaristic ends is not new. Following Horatio’s plea, Denmark’s new ruler commands: ‘Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage… and for his passage/The soldier’s music and the rite of war/Speak loudly for him.’ This, surely, is not what the prince’s friend had in mind. ‘United 93’ might be an insular response to a global tragedy, but – taken on its own, limited terms – it is powerful and sincere, giving reign to pity and fear without indulging jingoism or sentimentality. For that at least it deserves applause. Ben Walters

36 Quai des Orfevres



Olivier Marchal spent 12 years as a "flic", a French cop, before turning to a career in film. That gives this film a certain rough reality, a sense of truth about the way his characters think, but his stylistic influences are all from other movies.

On the surface, 36 Quai des Orfevres is slick, commercial "modern" filmmaking. Most scenes are pumped up with mood music; the camera prowls, shifting position to keep things from looking too clear; the interiors are often dark but designed, a sort of "flic chic".

Against this, his cops are old-fashioned - bold, tough, flinty and ruthless, like the way criminals are often portrayed in movies. Like the way some real cops see themselves in the movie going on inside their heads.

The title comes from the address of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Judicial Police, a name as familiar to the French as Scotland Yard is to the English. Daniel Auteuil, as Leo Vrinks, heads up the BRI, the Search and Action Squad, a glamour unit of supercops. They are hard-drinking and quick on the draw - gunslingers in leather jackets. Gerard Depardieu, as Denis Klein, runs the lower-profile OCU, or Anti-Crime Unit.

The units do not speak to each other, but the pressure is on. A gang of efficient and deadly thieves has mounted seven raids on armoured cars, killing nine security guards and netting 2 million euros. The CID boss, Robert Mancini (Andre Dussollier) is named the new police commissioner. He tells Vrinks that he should get the CID job, but Klein wants it. The one who nabs the armoured car gang will get it.

When two hoods beat up a madam who's an old friend, Vrinks and three colleagues take one of them to a freshly dug grave in the woods, strip him naked and shoot a gun so close to his ear that he almost dies of fright. "We shoulda wasted him," one of them says in the car back to town. No one seems surprised at this suggestion.

The script is cleverly structured as a series of moral questions, each more difficult than the last. Klein and Vrinks were once friends. The fight between them is about scruples as much as power and it stretches over years. In this, the movie has a distinctly 19th-century feel, a touch of the epic French novel. Marchal says he was partly inspired by Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo. He was also inspired by the fall from grace of a cop he knew.

This man is listed as one of the authors of the screenplay. Dominique Loiseau was a senior officer in the BRI when he was convicted on corruption charges. He served six years of a 12-year sentence. Marchal claims he was "sent down to protect the established order, in place of a man the administration wanted to protect". The Monte Cristo angle is thus very personal, and it feels like it. The bad blood is close to the surface.

Depardieu recently announced that he will retire from film when he completes his current commitments. That will be a sad day. His turn as the malevolent Klein makes clear that his powers are undiminished, especially with the formidable Auteuil as competition. It's a battle of the great, bent French noses.

Poseidon



Irwin Allen would be proud. Poseidon is a throwback - a 1970s-style disaster film made with 2006-era special effects. The movie delivers in most of the ways that matter for a motion picture of this ilk, with Poseidon never trying to be something it isn't. It's about a group of two-dimensional humans battling bad luck and Mother Nature in a sea-based disaster that makes Titanic look like a pleasure cruise. There's enough uncertainty about who's going to live and who's going to die to maintain a bit of suspense until the end, although it's more a question of mild curiosity than having a vested interest.

One smart move by director Wolfgang Petersen and his screenwriter, Mark Protosevich, is not to attempt to develop the protagonists. Each character in this film represents a tried-and-true disaster film stereotype - from the self-absorbed loner who finds redemption in helping others to the kid who doesn't listen to his mother. The film opens with a few brief scenes that equate each character with their respective type. We are not subjected to the too often obligatory "character building" sequences that serve little purpose beyond expanding the running length and providing unintentional humor (see Armageddon, Deep Impact, The Core, etc.).

The film is more a re-imagining than a direct remake of the 1972 feature, The Poseidon Adventure. Although the premise and basic setup are the same, the characters and their specific situations are new. That means no Gene Hackman or Shelly Winters. After a 150-foot high rogue wave capsizes the Poseidon during a New Year's cruise, a group of survivors struggles to escape from the ship before it sinks. The group is comprised of professional gambler Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas); ex-fireman and ex-mayor of New York City Robert Ramsay (Kurt Russell); single mother Maggie James (Lucinda Barrett) and her son, Conor (Jimmy Bennett); Ramsay's daughter, Jennifer (Emmy Rossum), and her fiancé, Christian (Mike Vogel); depressed businessman Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss); and stowaway Elena (Mia Maestro). Leaving the "safety" of the upside-down grand ballroom, where most of the survivors huddle behind bulkheads waiting for rescue, these men and women face fire, water, and other perils in their struggle to take control of their own destinies.

When one considers a disaster flick, there are two aspects of the production that come under scrutiny. The first: How spectacular is that actual disaster? The second: How many surprises are there in the body count, and are the action scenes leading to the deaths convincing and exciting? Although Poseidon doesn't get top grades on either count, it does a respectable job in both areas. Some of the victims and survivors are evident from the start, but one or two aren't obvious. (No director in his right mind would kill a kid or a dog in a disaster film.

Wolfgang Petersen is no stranger to thrillers at sea - he helmed both Das Boot and A Perfect Storm. In this case, his cast has to face not only water but fire, as explosions rock different parts of the ship. One can tell from watching Poseidon that this was a physically demanding shoot for the actors. If stunt doubles are used, they're not evident. And many of the most daring feats appear to have been done using a life-sized sound stage rather than through the magic of CGI. That often gives Poseidon a more organic, less high-tech feel.

In the wake of Titanic, there's probably a temptation to turn a sea-disaster picture like Poseidon into en epic romance/adventure. It's a temptation that Petersen thankfully resists. Poseidon is devoid of anything that might conjure up memories of the Winslet/DiCaprio coupling. Its straightforward action/adventure approach is both a strength and a weakness. Petersen sets out to give us a group of undeveloped stock characters and a bunch of cheap thrills, and that's what he delivers. If that's the kind of thing you want from a would-be summer blockbuster, Poseidon will not disappoint.