Interview: Paul Greengrass

His shaggy gray hair falling over gold-rimmed glasses, British-born Paul Greengrass is an almost professorial presence, even when discussing one of the year's most hotly debated movies. United 93's (review) trailer alone prompted a barrage of editorial comment on either side of the "Is it too soon?" debate, but the only sign of the controversy Greengrass has weathered comes when I ask the simplest of questions: Why re-enact an event no one can possibly have forgotten? "This is the most important event of our lifetime," he responds. "There's a great and angry and passionate and engaged debate going on all across the world, and the debate is: What are we gonna do in the post-9/11 world? I think it's time—respectfully—for filmmakers to be able to join that conversation."

IMAGINING THE UNIMAGINABLE: Paul Greengrass (left) conferences with United 93's hijackers.

Greengrass, whose filmography includes documentaries on political violence in Northern Ireland as well as the docudrama Bloody Sunday, says that United 93 was an inevitable project for him. "As the years [after 9/11] went by, more and more I'd asked myself, 'What's the point of making those films, and having studied issues of violence, if I don't then address the most important act of terrorism in our lifetimes?'" But as much as it extends his own concerns, Greengrass stresses that the film is, like the events it chronicles, "a collective experience." Greengrass sought input from the families of Flight 93's victims, "without whom this film couldn't and shouldn't have been made," and employed structured improvisation to fill in the gaps between scraps of evidence. "I think you watch it and you think, 'It must have been a bit like that,'" Greengrass says, "the dynamics between the passengers, the ways certain people thought and acted."

Less speculation was needed for sequences set in the FAA control center and air-defense posts, where Greengrass used controllers and soldiers to play themselves. While the real-life figures were cast on for accuracy's sake, Greengrass found the re-enactments brought out more than mere facts. He recalls one particular moment, where a blond communications officer puts her hand to her mouth in utter shock as the second plane strikes the World Trade Center. "That woman was right there on that day, in that place, doing that job," Greengrass says. "We filmed for 20 minutes as she grappled, reliving this issue of the hijacked plane. They couldn't find it on the scopes, she's trying to get information about it, and then, suddenly, bam! The second plane strikes. I remember as we caught her reaction, I thought, 'That's not acting.'"

Though United 93 shows the breakdown in communications between the military and the FAA in excruciating detail, Greengrass has no interest in assigning blame, focusing instead on individuals struggling with a hopelessly overtaxed system. "The system broke down," he says. "It wasn't anybody's fault." But if he won't point fingers, Greengrass clearly intends the movie as a political statement, a reminder that many of the shortcomings laid bare by the day's events remain largely unaddressed. "The film is ultimately about hard choices," he says. "Those passengers confronted a hard and unavoidable choice. We have the luxury of being able to get on with our lives. Here we are, five years later, and we don't have any solutions to this problem—not viable ones, not ones that are working. Got a few that are making it worse. We have to show the same courage that those passengers showed in our pursuit of solutions that are going to work, whatever those solutions are. They're probably unimaginable ones, right at this moment."