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We
see these things happen on the television, and of course we’re shocked
and momentarily we stop, pay our respects, but then we want to carry on
with our lives, untouched, because it’s the World Cup coming, because
I’m going to the pub, because I’ve got my holiday booked, and all that.
And what we expect of these families is having had their anointed
moment as victims, they disappear. But if you’re a family, compelled
against your will and never expecting it to happen, parked up against
the overwhelming psychological imperative to seek meaning, you refuse
to accept victimhood. You demand to speak. You demand that we all
address this issue. Why has this happened? What are we going to do
about it?
these
images of a bloody struggle for the controls of a plane that’s plunging
to the earth is an image that speaks to where we’re going if we’re not
very careful
“But we don’t really want to do that because to do it involves profound
change, so you find often that we have this question, ‘Is it too early
to do a film about 9/11?’ We don’t mean for them. They say, ‘Why wasn’t
the film made the day after?’ We mean it’s too early for us to stop
having our summer holidays and get to grips with this thing. Because we
know what the context of this thing is. Every one of us, from wherever
we are on the political spectrum, and whatever we think about what’s
going on, know, ultimately, deep down, that our world is divided by
this Western pocket of extraordinary modernity and wealth, and the rest
of the world is a seething cauldron of resentment and anger...
"And obviously, clearly, clearly, we’re not
improving the situation, the situation’s getting worse. So maybe we
should go back to the place where it began. Wherever you are on the
political spectrum, I think it’s common ground that something happened
that day that caused our perceptions to change. So let’s sit down and
tell the story of this one event and see what that tells us.”
How do you think
this adds to the debate about what happened on 9/11 and do you think it
will help in a dialogue between communities?
“OK, well, it seemed
to me, starting this film, that 9/11, and particularly this aeroplane,
United 93, in some ways symbolically the heart of the event, had been
kind of corralled from two sides of a political debate. On the one side
you had ‘Let’s roll’ turned into a political slogan, that it meant all
sorts of things, you know? And on the other hand you had the kind of
conspiratorial left, in a sense, arguing that this was not the truth
and the truth, ultimately, was that the bad guys were our government –
we were being lied to and so on and so forth.
“One of the things
this film is an attempt to do is take those two propositions and say,
‘Let’s try and explore this story based on what we can verifiably know
and then, in good faith, using the tools at our disposal, which are the
9/11 Commission, and a group of actors and aviation professionals and
pilots, and sitting in a real aeroplane, with the timeline, let’s
explore what probably happened, and be faithful to what we know
happened.’ Because we know, broadly speaking, what happened; we know
when the hijack occurred, we know roughly when it ended, we know
roughly where they were in the aeroplane, we know when they started
making calls, we know from the many calls over the next 20 minutes,
roughly speaking, what was happening, we know from calls made on other
aeroplanes, because they were doing the same thing, so we can
extrapolate a lot, and the 9/11 Commission did that, and we know when
the counter-attack began, and we know from many of the phone calls that
it had the character of a mass attack, not just a tiny group of people,
and we know from what the plane did in the air what must have been
occurring in there, and we know from the 30-minute cockpit voice
recording what was going on in the cockpit. So we can know an awful
lot. But, of course, we can’t know all what happened. So,
using all of that, let’s explore a believable truth, because that has
got to be serving us better than either the political sloganeering or
the conspiracy mongering, if you like.
“Now why is that
important? It seems to me important because, at the moment, in the
post-9/11 world, all our societies, but obviously the United States
particularly, are riven with a debate between those two poles about
what we’re going to do in the post-9/11 world and what our correct
response should be. And obviously, clearly, clearly, we’re not
improving the situation, the situation’s getting worse. So maybe we
should go back to the place where it began. Wherever you are on the
political spectrum, I think it’s common ground that something happened
that day that caused our perceptions to change. So let’s sit down and
tell the story of this one event and see what that tells us.”
obviously, clearly, clearly, we’re not
improving the situation, the situation’s getting worse
How about also
looking at the pre-9/11 world and the events and decisions which may
have contributed to the reasons for the 9/11 attacks? My concern is
that the power of films like United 93 and Oliver Stone’s forthcoming
World Trade Centre could make it appear almost obscene to engage in
that kind of debate, that you drown out that kind of enquiry, that
things like foreign policy and so on don’t get debated, especially in
the mainstream.
“I understand the
question. I don’t agree at all. I think precisely the opposite,
actually, and I thought that for quite a number of years, and that’s
why I’ve made some of the films that I have. I think the attempt to
contextualise in some ways leads you into more problems than refusing
to contextualise, because one man’s contextualisation is another man’s
propaganda, and that then becomes what the film is about. When, in
fact, what you want is for people to contextualise it themselves. And I
think they do.
“Now why do I think
this? Well, I can tell you very clearly why: I can remember, a year
ago, starting to explore in a serious way doing this film, but I wasn’t
sure. You know, and it was having to do with making films like ‘Bloody
Sunday’ and ‘Omagh’, and films like Stephen Lawrence, films about
political violence where I’d worked very closely with families, so I
was sort of thinking about should I, could I, what would it be, where
would it go, and then 7/7 happened. And I remember, I remember it quite
distinctly, my son, we couldn’t find him for about an hour. He was
fine, he was nowhere near the Tube, but for an hour, like I’m sure
hundreds upon hundreds upon hundred of thousands of people, just like
what happened in Madrid, just like happened in New York, just like
happened in Bali, there’s this rippling out where you think, ‘Oh my
God, maybe this thing has touched me.’ And you feel fear and anger. And
when it’s over, and it’s all alright, you like look at this child and
just think, ‘How have we got to this place that these things happen and
what are we going to do about it?’
“What’s interesting
here is it’s about this thing, which is, why involve the families? You
have to involve the families, number one, because they’re the
foundation of legitimacy. If you don’t have the strongest possible, and
widest possible, support from the families, then you have no business
making these films, in my view. But there’s another reason which in a
way is even more important and it’s this, and I’ve said this many times
when I’ve made films in Northern Ireland: If you wanted to understand
the sort of real truths that lie at the heart of political violence in
a democracy and what it’s about, go and talk to people whose lives have
been destroyed by it. Really talk. Spend time with them. And I’ve done
it, I’ve been lucky enough to do it, quite a lot in different places,
different sorts of violence. The Bloody Sunday families, these innocent
family members shot by the British army in a counter-terrorism
operation; the Omagh families, people from all across the political
spectrum and religious spectrum, blown up by a bomb on a market square;
the United 93 families. Stephen Lawrence - it’s political violence,
essentially; it’s racial violence the same thing - a Jamaican family, a
son murdered in the middle of the street. What you find when you go and
meet these people and spend time with them is the absolute reverse of
what you think you’d find. You very rarely find bitterness and a thirst
for revenge. But what you do find, always in my experience, is this
sense of lives destroyed and changed in their direction irrevocably.
You find a pattern of many of these people, from different backgrounds,
different starting points, then compelled on a journey towards meaning,
because their children or their parents or their husband or their wife
have been killed, or horrendously injured. Why has this thing happened?
What are we going to do to stop it?
“Those of us not
touched directly don’t really ever want to engage in these questions.
For us, we see these things happen on the television, and of course
we’re shocked and momentarily we stop, pay our respects, but then we
want to carry on with our lives, untouched, because it’s the World Cup
coming, because I’m going to the pub, because I’ve got my holiday
booked, and all that. And what we expect of these families is having
had their anointed moment as victims, they disappear. But if you’re a
family, compelled against your will and never expecting it to happen,
parked up against the overwhelming psychological imperative to seek
meaning, you refuse to accept victimhood. You demand to speak. You
demand that we all address this issue. Why has this happened? What are
we going to do about it?
“But we don’t really
want to do that because to do it involves profound change, so you find
often that we have this question, ‘Is it too early to do a film about
9/11?’ We don’t mean for them. They say, ‘Why wasn’t the film made the
day after?’ We mean it’s too early for us to stop having our summer
holidays and get to grips with this thing. Because we know what the
context of this thing is. Every one of us, from wherever we are on the
political spectrum, and whatever we think about what’s going on, know,
ultimately, deep down, that our world is divided by this Western pocket
of extraordinary modernity and wealth, and the rest of the world is a
seething cauldron of resentment and anger. We know that.
do any of us in any
of our countries elect governments who are going to fix that? Would we
vote for a party that would say, ‘We’re going to quadruple your tax
because we’re going to deal with the problems of the world?’ “Now, we can have an
argument about what we can do about it. But we know that that’s the
reality. Somewhere this thing comes from there. But do any of us in any
of our countries elect governments who are going to fix that? Would we
vote for a party that would say, ‘We’re going to quadruple your tax
because we’re going to deal with the problems of the world?’ No.
Nowhere would we do that. Of course not, that’s the problem.”
How did you get the families’ permission?
“By asking them and
accepting that if they said no you wouldn’t make the film, and by
showing them the previous film’s I had made, and by making a commitment
to speak to them, because I believe, based on the films I had made,
that that wasn’t something that you get. It’s by engaging with them
that you suffuse your film with exactly what I’m talking about:: the
search for meaning, the requirement to find it.”
Were they all onboard from the start?
“I found this before
when I asked, you tend to have three pockets of people: people who
definitely want a film made, people who are not sure, and people who
are opposed. Then you have to get into a dialogue and explain who you
are, what you’ve done, and how you propose to make the film. Then what
happened in this case is the undecideds became strongly convinced, and
the sceptical people, we learnt a lot more about what their scepticism
was based on, and that’s really quite interesting.
“Mrs Felt, her
husband died in the plane, and I remember sitting at a meeting with
her, and she was initially opposed to this film. She said she would
meet and talk about it and I explained as honestly as I could what we
were trying to do, and I said, ‘One of the problems, of course, is that
any film I make will be quite realistic, otherwise there would be no
point in me making it.’ I thought, of course, this would be one of her
issues. I said, ‘It would be harrowing, and we must confront that, and
if that’s not something people want then I wouldn’t make it. But I am
worried that I might create images that would cause you distress.’
She’s a most impressive and formidable person and I’ll never forget it.
She fixed me with a very steely eye, and she said, ‘There are no images
that you could ever create that would come near the images that I live
with every day and have done since September 11. The issue for me is
not that. The issue is that I’m opposed to a film being made that
doesn’t have them in it, because if you’re not prepared to address
honestly the reality of this thing, then I’m not interested in being
involved.’ So she came to believe, and I felt the moral force of what
she was saying.”
Did you also get the families together?
“Oh yeah,
absolutely. And continually. All the way across production and all the
way to today. The other crucial issue when you meet families is to say,
‘Let me make my film but you will see it first. And if you don’t like
it, of course you will say so publicly. And then the film will be
destroyed. And rightly so.’ So you make yourself accountable to them,
you know?”
How did you choose who would be heroic?
“There were no
problems. In the end what you do is you sit together, collectively, as
a group, and come up with rules. And the rules were to have a group of
actors interacting with professional people. So, in the air traffic
control, it was air traffic controllers and actors, in the military
environment it was military personnel, and in the aeroplane flight
attendants and pilots. They were real, trained, that’s what their jobs
were, and you collectively discuss all the issues, searchingly and at
length, and you set out at the outset saying, ‘We cannot know the
truth, all we can do is be faithful to known facts, which are quite
considerable. We know, broadly speaking, what happened, and we know a
lot of the detail. But the choices that we make about what we don’t
know, we will all discuss and we will all have reasons for them. Then
we must trust that the aggregate of all of those choices, discussed,
represents the best that we can do, given that we can never recreate
the past.’ You can’t, you never can, it’s a piece of cinema. But you do
that on the basis that it will speak to us today. That’s all you can
do. Audiences will judge for themselves whether it feels believable and
if it’s an insight that pushes back the political ownership of 9/11
from either side and creates this space where you can recognise common
humanity, true meaning, in an event that speaks to us today. This
event, this violent confrontation in a sealed, hi-tech aeroplane,
guzzling gasoline, does that speak to us today? It does to me. It’s
where we are, isn’t it?”
Is it difficult not to demonise people when you make a film like this?
“When I made Bloody
Sunday, one of the things that film did was play very strongly in
Britain, because people saw it for what it was: a truthful and honest
attempt to explore what it was honestly like in the early years of the
Troubles, without ducking the fact that tremendous mistakes were made
and on that day murder was committed. But you didn’t feel that those
soldiers were psychopathic monsters turning up to shoot innocent
people. You felt what they were: trained soldiers in the middle of a
counter-terrorism campaign, who had been told to go to a place to draw
a line in the sand, and the build up of tension between the
demonstration and the counter-demonstration, military activity created
this ballet that in the end marched everybody over the edge. But it
didn’t duck responsibility for who did what. And in a sense it’s the
same with this film. You have to in some way craft a film that is
dispassionate and compassionate so that you understand that you
condemn, obviously, the horrendous violence took places on that
aeroplane, but yet you understand that those young men are driven by a
devout and blind sense of the rightness of their cause. I always used
to say to my actors, ‘This is the line Bob Dylan never wrote when he
wrote ‘God on our Side’”, because those guys thought they had God on
their side.”
How difficult was it working without a script?
“Well we had a
document. It wasn’t a formal screenplay in that sense but it probably
had more words in it than the normal screenplay. It was 90-pages long,
it was actually a prose document, but it was broken down scene by
scene, so that we understood at each point where in the story we were.
It had some pieces of dialogue in it but not very much. The reasons
being that on the one hand, if you’re in, say, an air traffic control
environment and an aeroplane drops its transponder, well there’s no
point me writing dialogue for what an air traffic controller does at
that point because those guys are trained for it all their lives. You
just have to create the scenario and then they do what they do. In the
aeroplane, of course, it was different, because in the aeroplane you’re
mining elemental fear, basically, and there’s a certain point where
you, as a director, if you want to express complex, collective eddies
and shoals of emotion that race around in a group from individual to
individual, that what you’re really addressing is the complexity of the
group dynamics than being interested in the specifics of what people
say. So what you were trying to do in that is divide off the groupings.
You had the stewardesses at one end, the young men at the other,
because that’s likely how it would work.”
At the end the
film becomes a kind of metaphor, it seems to me, for the human
condition, that it’s humanity clawing at humanity, and we’re all headed
for disaster if we don’t find a solution to this problem. Was that your
intention?
“Well I used to say
to the actors, and I’m sure they’ll probably remember, ‘When you get
out of your seats to engage in that last seven minutes of violence, you
are those men and women then, fighting for your lives and fighting to
get home.’ We all collectively felt quite sure that none of them were
fighting for a cause or for politics. They were fighting for their
lives and they were fighting to get home, and that, incidentally, is
what the families felt. But somewhere along the line, as that struggle
unfolds, I used to say, ‘I want to feel that you are still those
individuals then, but you are us now, all of us now, and all of us
tomorrow.’”
And does that go for the terrorists as well because they all seem equalised as human being in this tragic moment?
“I wouldn’t say
equalised. It depends what you mean by equal. Morally, no. But these
images of a bloody struggle for the controls of a plane that’s plunging
to the earth is an image that speaks to where we’re going if we’re not
very careful. But not moral equivalence. I don’t believe in moral
equivalence.”
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