I've never been one to assert that movies need to serve an ethical or political purpose in order for them to matter. In fact, I've spent many hours arguing with people that movies dismissed as fluff often deserve closer readings. Recently, after watching Syriana and a week later United 93, I've begun to wonder if my tastes are changing. Rather than focus on the aesthetic merits or flaws of the movies, I was caught up in the politics and the moral questions beings posed.

What impressed me about both United 93 and Syriana was their depiction of moral complexity. Syriana's complexity bled over into the narrative to its detriment. But in United 93, the fact that the characters did not wear black and white hats allowed me to cheer on the passengers without feeling as if I needed to see vengeance enacted on screen. (If I were personally invested, I'm sure that I'd feel differently.) There was no doubt in my mind that the terrorist'acts were reprehensible while the passengers' actions were heroic, but I also felt that every single passenger and member of the crew were human. In both movies, I left the movie questioning systems which endenger terrorism rather than the terrorists themselves.

I've always respected movies which could entertain and make you think, but now I'm even less interested in the entertainment piece of the equation. Both United 93 and Syriana were very difficult to watch. I didn't enjoy any of the visual or narrative pleasures that I usually do in movies that impress me. And I wouldn't see either nominated for an award. But that doesn't matter at all. What matters is the fact that when I turned off the TV, I wanted to act. I didn't want to kill anyone. I wanted to change something.

As more of an aside than anything else, I'm obsessing over the film's motivation for having a North European (Dutch?) discourage the other passengers from fighting back. Was their factual support for his inclusion? Was his voice heard in any of the phone calls? Or was it part of the improvisation on the parts of the actors?
If the character was included by the director, was it intended as a criticism of appeasement as a policy with terrorists? Or was it a broader attack on those countries which haven't fought back?

(I actually did some googling and discovered that apparently Greengrass thought it likely that some of the passengers would have thought an attack unreasonable. Erich Redman, playing the role of Christian Adams --a German wine importer--, postulated that the cautious Adams would have been someone who would have thought it more prudent to obey the terrorists. Such moments in movies are so interesting, aren't they? I realized, for example, that I assumed the character was Dutch because of a perception of the Dutch as tolerant to the point of collaboration.)