As United 93 Opens at Tribeca Festival, Shock, Pain, Culture

By Choire Sicha

By 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 25, four news vans, an immensely long red carpet and a gaggle of conspiracy theorists had gathered around the Ziegfeld Theater for the Tribeca Film Festival’s premiere of United 93. People calling themselves part of the 9/11 Truth Movement distributed leaflets—they were quickly banned across the street—and yelled at a man walking his dog.

Jason Bermas wore a maroon hoodie with white letters that read “Investigate 9/11.” He spoke into his friend Dylan Avery’s camera at the entrance to the red carpet: “This film is totally ‘nonfiction’”—yes, he made scare quotes with his fingers—“based on the 9/11 Report.”

The crowd swelled. In the press line, a WB11 reporter turned to a UPN9 reporter and said, “I couldn’t find one person that was negative.”

Jamie Harding, an English actor who plays one of the hijackers, sauntered down the carpet. He said he spent two weeks studying suicide bombers “to try to understand what it’s all about.” Well, then, what is it all about? “That’s a whole different conversation,” Mr. Harding said. “Everybody has their own opinions.” And what were his opinions? “I’ll keep them to myself,” Mr. Harding said.

Limos arrived, and filmgoers. “I’m kind of somber, and kind of—what’s that word?” said Debbie Lanham, 50, of Baltimore, describing her feelings on the way in. “When you go to a funeral home? In observance.”

And then the movie began.

“CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW HORRIBLE it was to die in those buildings and on those planes?” asked Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial closing arguments on April 24.

Can’t you? “Who among us doesn’t think about that day,” asked Paul Greengrass in the press materials for United 93, “and wonder how it must have been and how we might have reacted?”

If the culture—and criminal-prosecution—industries are to be believed, dying by terrorist is all you think about. With less reason than ever, Americans now seem to think more and more about the humiliating—and often Islamist-related—ways in which they might be surprised.

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