ABSTRACT
The film United 93 begins with the men who would become the hijackers of this airplane seemingly performing their ordinary morning routines. Some are dressing while others are praying and reading religious texts. Yet, mixed into these apparent displays of their daily tasks are suggestions that something ominous is about to happen, beginning with the pulsating soundtrack that establishes the film’s dramatic tension. In this opening scene, we view one of the men palpably anxious and another shaving his entire body. Initiating the film from the hijackers’ pointof-view profoundly establishes the tone of the film, particularly in the ways it weaves the ordinary and extraordinary, attributes that will also define the course of events on September 11, 2001. Moreover, this scene reinforces our historical knowledge about what happened on 9/11, namely that Islamist extremists hijacked American commercial aircraft, and turned them into weapons of mass destruction directed towards American landmarks such as the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This historical knowledge will predicate the way viewers engage the movie, powerfully reinforcing the cinematic sensibility of fear that unfolds over the course of the film. Precisely because we know what happened on that day in September 2001, the film’s narrative tension intensifies as the events move towards the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93, emotionally enveloping us in the movie’s terror. Yet, the opening moments of United 93 do not portray these men as menacing terrorists even though we know their malevolent plan. In fact, we become acutely aware in this scene, as well as in those that follow, that the movie is about the ways people transcend the banality of everyday life to perform the heroic.
