Stayed up late last night to watch United 93 on DVD. It's a riveting film and a courageous film on the part of director Paul Greengrass in that it's shot almost cinema verite style -- no Hollywood-style character back stories, no overwrought climax. You just see what happened, as it happened (Greengrass acknowledges on the DVD commentary that they don't know the whole truth about what happened up there; he just wanted to construct what he called a "believable truth.") In most cases you don't even know the characters' names -- and it doesn't really matter. What matters is what they did.
If you saw United 93 in the theaters, rent the DVD anyway. It's worth if just for an hourlong extra feature that deals with the families of the victims, what they went through, and how they felt about the making of the movie. For many of them, this movie wasn't made "too soon" -- it wasn't soon enough.
If the best-director Oscar doesn't go to Martin Scorsese, I hope it goes to Paul Greengrass.
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1 comment:
Excellent. I'm glad you got to see it and that you recognize Paul Greengrass's excellent directing. I doubt he has much chance of winning tonight, but he's my choice anyway.
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