Daily Speculations The Web Site of Victor Niederhoffer and Laurel Kenner

12-May-2006
"United 93" from Yossi Ben-Dak

When you enjoy seeing movies, you rarely find the kind of experience that should be digested fully, in order to get a better hold of when and where you live. Mission Impossible 3, better perhaps than all the previous ones, is to me still impossible. The horror movies that do so well in the mass market have a limited titillating function that I can consume only rarely and I still learn more from my regular nightmares. Even more significant is the need to be in touch with factual basis of our life, which need not contradict being entertained, by viewing a few true reality movies, from time to time.

We all know, that is those of us that are somewhat Educated, that "Deception is ubiquitous". We always want to deal effectively with uncertainties. Nevertheless, we often dare not fully comprehend evil when it faces us and is intent on having the upper hand. Mission and fake evil movies may entertain precisely because we know it is not the real smell, color and threat--and most importantly because consequences are truly inconsequential.. Spitting back more questions after we tested hypotheses and confirmed outcomes is mostly useful when real life understanding and forecasting is, thereby, enriched.

However, when so many of my friends keep asking if United 93 is a too soon film or already too late, I do have my reservations regarding both, because I think that for most people this is an experience that includes an opportunity to reexamine our mental and political awareness and muscles in a given situation that has ingredients of future realities. With imagination, it can be extended to a whole plethora of horrible scenarios. It is not too early, because it is not only a movie about a painful disastrous death of crew and passengers of a plane, that we heard so much already about in 2001. It brings home a real time, carefully scripted to be valid, background scenario of unpreparedness in terms of real US government, US armed forces, Air Traffic Control Centers, every present individual's -- and our own -- mindset. Before the threat became very obvious and particularly after, we experience a system that, in parts and in whole, was not ready to accept that others who hate us are just about finished studying us, motivated and capable, and even though they look like us, they are not. These enemies are full of "obscurantist, mass -homicidal, suicidal Islamist fanaticism" as Eclipse magazine puts it. They not only exist, but perpetuate.

This depiction, as chillingly honest as is the flight group (stewardesses, passengers) realization that perfect evil must be battled as effectively and as promptly, with possible self sacrifice in clear sight, is yet to arrive home in our national, local community and individual consciousness. The point is that it is not too early to realize that the varieties of in coordination, miscommunication, over crowdedness in decision spaces allotted for responsible managers, lack of rules of engagement or understanding their dynamic imperatives, mental and info noise that cuts into efficiency and efficacy of critical regular activities, e.g. in air control centers -- so well elucidated in the film, are going to stay with us for a long time. These have nothing to do with theatrical repair motions of the Commissions that were set up to study and countervail terror. The deepest insight in this movie to me, is in exacting the awareness that government cannot defend citizenry from the unending scenarios of terror, because of its complexity, its built in laziness, its bureaucratic and fright incapacity to draw conclusions across events and trends and because, unlike markets, the confusion between sales and wealth for shareholders is never ending, because in democracy, every person and group can effect the political game of values maximized -- a right which is used and abused.

The growing responsibility that falls on the shoulder of the average citizen in facing terror and the imperative of second amendment implications cannot be exaggerated when you see the 33 passengers and seven crew members stand up to the four knife wielding hijackers, once they massacred the two pilots. The fact is that not enough was done and will ever be done to insure that that scenario -- or others that evil will concoct -- will have zero chances before it happened. The only saving grace, which in the movie did not work, depends on collective intent of courageous and aware individuals. It is definitely not too late to realize that we need to train ourselves not to be in the victimized position flight 93 found itself in. My wish is for a preparation of response set that requires no self sacrifice because imagination and planning too their proper function in our lives.

We may know it all, you might say, without having to see the movie. Perhaps -- but here are some more details why the lessons and experience are truly worthy.

I like the moral stand that was taken by the gifted Paul Greengrass, the director and writer of United 93, to get the support of the families of the passengers and crew. He did what so many others ignored in similar projects in the past--the right for a say about the memory of departed loved ones, especially these heroes.

What is of special value to our discussion above is that Greengrass did a momentous groundwork to depict the realities as they actually were. For example, all cell phone records with the passengers are inputs to the script; physical properties and interviews with close relatives of the passengers and terrorists were used in effective casting; actual air control maps and on the go verbal instructions were captured in the movie. [see for comparison, references in PG News, October, 28, 2001).

Aviation and military roles are, to a degree that I have never seen before, played by the actual personnel. Particularly instructive is Ben Sliney and his team at the Virginia Federal Aviation Administration's Command Center that celebrated their first day of collective working relations, on September 11. The validity and courage in showing their colors including gray ones and a few terrible judgments adds the realism missing in many fake movies on air control scenes.

The contextual and time line events are extremely well documented with real time picture and original verbal analyses and hypotheses, as these were developed on the fly. This is how we learn about the other planes hijacking stories and corresponding reality as it sank in ,at various levels of decision making, and the passengers cognition of their world and options. Certain rumors like the one that had an F-16 circling Flight 93 and being in visual range at the time of the crash or other reports about actually shooting down of the United flight are all dealt with forthrightly with evidence, often calling into the screen, the decision makers themselves. [see for comparative reference, "How Did United Flight 93 Crash", on line, last updated August 1, 2003]

This, of course, is not a classical entertainment movie because it poses directly and indirectly very serious questions of individual and collective responsibility and the need to move away from mediocrity in next stage rethinking. Clearly, it provides raw material that is valid and reliable [certain in-flight events had to be imagined without evidence] and needs to be comprehended, before we are ready to do better in life that is full of joy and excitement, yet more responsible for and with future generations.