Unease

On our second day of screening for this project, we were shown a documentary by Johan Grimonprez called Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, which is essentially a history of hijacking on planes and attacks on airports. It has other things to say of course, but that is what it is presented as.

It is a very intense experience. In terms of editing there are cutaways to seemingly random imagery, such as rats dying. It is sinister and also very funny in a dark, ironic sense. With a use of juxtaposition of images and pop music to create irony, like images of staff mopping up blood for example, it's very easy to see the opinion of the director on hijacking and the issues that surround it. However despite this intense and disturbing nature of the film, it is constantly engaging and it definitely gets across many different messages about hijacking, and it is very reflective.

The messages of this film can be interpreted in many ways. Clearly it is not a film about just hijacking in a chronological and historical sense, rather it uses that as a basis for demonstrating to the audience a number of facts in the form of archive footage which we can interpret in any which way we please. For me, I get messages of governmental officials having not taken hijacking seriously when it first started, of a question of justification of hijacking as the people doing it want to get the attention, the help they need from us, and also a recognition and belief in the society of the spectacle theory.

With regards to when this film was made (1997) 09/11 obviously had not happened yet and so this film somewhat applies prior to that, in a time when people took it less seriously than they do now. However in many ways you can see how Johan saw 09/11 coming. Now, I say that they didn't take it seriously based on moments in the film when people who had been in a plane which was hijacked (mainly Americans) were recalling how exciting it was and with the press asking them what they ate and other non-important things. It actually fills me with anger to think about it. It all relates to the society of the spectacle theory which means that we as a society are attracted and engaged by large events, including tragedies such as plane crashes and hijackings. Also in many ways it highlights the extremities of the media, and reveals journalists as the major reason for hijacking being an effective means of publicity.

To support this, it uses footage of interviews with hijackers to show an alternative side of the story, which brings about an interesting point of view. From the film's perspective, it seems that the western world does not understand their troubles and that we refuse to help them fight and keep their people alive. To me this highlights the message the film is trying to present that we didn't take hijacking seriously enough and that is why it continued to happen. In some ways, 09/11 gives us a very unique hindsight into perhaps what should have been done earlier.

An extremely well delivered, engaging and darkly enjoyable film that I will be watching again.