"United 93" is a powerful memorial to Sept. 11

Heroes come in many forms; some speak loudly, some just whisper. "United 93," Paul Greengrass' meticulous re-enactment of one of the hijacked flights on Sept. 11, 2001, provides a heartbreaking reminder. We all know the stories of the brave men who joined together to storm the cockpit and attempt to take back the plane from terrorists. We even know a few of their names from that terrible day — Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham — and we celebrate them, rightfully, as symbols of the very best in us.

But there was another kind of heroism on that plane, one that perhaps didn't make so many headlines. A woman, tearfully speaking to a loved one for the last time, cuts her own phone call short so as to press her phone into the hands of the stranger next to her. "Call your people," she says quietly. An emergency medical technician, covered in blood, frantically attempts to revive a fellow passenger. A flight attendant desperately calls out to passengers to buckle their seat belts; still trying to keep them safe, against all odds. A man presses his sobbing wife's head close to his shoulder, making sure that whatever happened, they would be together.

Perhaps we already knew more than we cared to about United Airlines Flight 93, or thought we did. Perhaps the wounds are still too raw to watch this film, which may well screen in empty theaters this weekend. (Would I have chosen to see this film, if my work hadn't compelled me to do so? Probably not.) But regardless, it must be said that Greengrass was exactly the right person to make this film, and his "United 93" is made with respect, with art and with love.

In "Bloody Sunday," Greengrass' 2002 film about the 1972 massacre of civil-rights demonstrators in Northern Ireland, the writer/director showed his uncanny knack for immediacy, for drawing an audience so deep inside a story that you forget you're watching a movie. "United 93," made with the cooperation of many of the victims' friends and family members, has the same quality, and is even more devastating. The actors disappear into their characters; there's nothing actor-ish about their work, just the kind of ordinary conversation and casual clothing and slouchy posture that we speak and wear and do ourselves, every day. They are us, and that ordinariness becomes eloquent: From these people, something extraordinary came.

The film isn't entirely the flight itself; Greengrass cuts seamlessly from the plane to various ground-crew locations, as we watch the horror unfold from different perspectives. (Many of the ground crew play themselves. Ben Sliney, operations manager of the FAA command center in Herndon, Va., was the man who shut down airspace on Sept. 11; his deep-voiced presence lends the film additional verisimilitude.) We see the terrorists — four tight-lipped men, one terribly young — waking up, praying and making their way through the airport. Every detail seems heightened: the blank-eyed, ominous stare of a model on an airport ad, the lanyard worn by an air-traffic control staffer with the slogan, "We guide you home."

In its late scenes, the tragedy on the plane becomes chaotic, as does the filmmaking — the camera lurches, the words shrieked by the terrorists fly by without recognition. But little moments of quiet register in the madness, particularly the telephone calls to loved ones during the terror, so heartbreaking you can barely listen. "You believe me, don't you, Mom?" says a young man.

It's completely understandable that many may not wish to see "United 93" — or might question why it even was made. But for all its shock value, it is never exploitative, and it has something important to say. When I walked out of the dark theater early this week and back into the ordinariness of my own life, blinking away tears in the bright sunshine, it felt like a gift. If "United 93" helps us to honor what has gone and to appreciate what is still with us, then it's done more than most movies ever will.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com