Indeed it is more often the case that the film industry in the US tends to avoid key events until they are safely concluded and tucked away in the history books.

It was 50 years after the Holocaust before Schindlers' List was made and 30 years after the murder of JFK before Oliver Stone made his biopic of that era.

The recent opening in the US of Paul Greengrasses movie United 93 is a notable exception to this. Previewed by the families of those who died on the fourth hijacked plane on 11 September 2001, the screenings also coincided with the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui in New York, where black box recordings of the final 30 minutes of the flight heard passengers attempting to take control of the plane back from the hijackers. The question most frequently asked has been: is it too soon?

In many other societies people look to poets and artists for interpretations of the illogical or incomprehensible. Seamus Heaney's poem on the cover of Magill after the Omagh bombing, speaking of the ?dullards" behind the planning of that atrocity, contained an eloquent pithiness in the midst of the cacophony.

But in the political climate of the United States since 9/11, opinion, artistic or otherwise, is far from as free as it used to be.

Until quite recently those who questioned the motivation for the Iraq war were shrilly accused of a lack of patriotism or of refusing to support the young cannon fodder sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sophistication and nuance in argument was often replaced by hectoring for us or against us" arguments.

The making of United 93 seemed, in the eyes of many commentators in the US, to be an issue of great temerity. The Washington Post's esteemed critic Tom Shales fulminated irately recently that it was wrong for anyone to profit from the events of 9/11, as though everything could be weighed and measured in monetary terms.

In the days and weeks that followed 9/11 it seemed unthinkable that even the sleaziest producers, Hollywood studios or TV networks would attempt to exploit any aspect of a nightmare that the nation had witnessed in horror, " he raged. ?But we were naive. Who will profit from the obscene events of Flight 93?"

Newsweek magazine rubbished the as yet unreleased movie and wondered if anyone would actually want to see it, while the New York Times wondered if even the trailer for the movie ought to carry a health warning, after some people walked out of cinemas in New York after seeing just the promo.

Given how long it has normally taken for cinema to reflect current events, there is more to be celebrated than condemned in Greengrasse's United 93. When one considers that, while the Vietnam War was at its height, Hollywood was conspicuously silent, with perhaps the exception of the jingoistic The Green Berets. Movies like Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter came years after, when the distance of time made it seem safer to explore. Despite the huge Jewish influence and presence in Hollywood, Schindlers' List was not made until nearly half a century after the Holocaust.

The families of those who died on the hijacked San Francisco-bound Flight 93, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, participated in the making of this film and were consulted and interviewed extensively by the director and crew.

While they could hardly be described as happy" with the movie, most seem satisfied with the final product.

Sensitive subject What impressed me is that he wanted to focus on the collective effort of all the passengers, instead of just focusing on a few, as in past productions, " said Carole O'Hare, whose mother died that day.

That's what we told Greengrass. We said we wanted everybody represented."

In the face of the criticism from those outside of the families, who have not yet even seen the movie, Greengrass said recently, I didn't come to this as an ingenue." Indeed the British director brought both gravitas and an impressive box-office track record to the table in the making of this movie. But the director of Bloody Sunday and The Bourne Supremacy also brought tact and sensitivity.

His sensitive handling of the relatives in the making of this movie was applauded by the families he had interviewed over many hours. The actors also spent many hours talking to the families about details of the passengers' lives and times.

The families are a very closely knit group, linked by a newsletter and email and most of all by the at-all-hours phonecalls that only another relative of a Flight 93 victim could understand or appreciate. Although they were apprehensive when the director phoned them over a year ago to talk about making the movie and to ask for their participation, his pedigree helped, along with his unHollywood personal touch in dealing with them.

If we are going to have the very necessary debate about the problems we face with terrorism and the high degree of militancy in the Muslim diaspora, don't we have to go back to these first two hours and see if there are any lessons or wisdom we can glean from them?" he said. ?9/11 has permeated every other aspect of our media. Are people really saying that movies, one of our principal means of storytelling, should be barred from discussing the subject?"

Well, it appears that that is precisely what a shrinking minority is saying.

But from the toughest audience of all, the families of those who were on board Flight 93, the response to the movie has been positive, a feeling that justice was done to their loved ones and themselves in this movie.

Dorothy Garcia, whose husband Andrew died on the plane, viewed the movie at a special showing for the families in San Francisco. He was among those who fought back against the hijackers before the plane crashed in Pennsylvania. I kept asking myself, 'Why am I doing this? Why am I going to see a movie where my husband gets killed?'" Alice Hoagland, whose son was on the same flight, attended the same screening.

?It was both excruciating and beautiful at the same time, " she said. ?I think it was faithful to what we know to have happened and where the filmmakers had to improvise, the dialogue was believable."

Many family members said the film hews closely to the information contained in the 9/11 commission report. But at times the realtime veracity was too much for some. Jack Grandcolas, whose wife Lauren died on the plane, tensed visibly during the screening, as he watched the actress who played his wife in the movie make a call to ?him" in the final minutes before the plane crashed.

Opening the floodgates Now that cinema (and to a greater extent television) has begun to dramatise the events of 9/11, there will no doubt be more to come. Oliver Stone is completing a $60m film called World Trade Centre, which is due to be released by Paramount Pictures in August. There are several other documentaries in the pipeline.

Among those who feel the time is not right and it is still too soon for such movies is New Yorker Marjorie Kase, who lost three family members in the twin towers.

I don't think the country is ready for this movie right now, " she said. We don't have enough perspective or hindsight on the matter."

Television has responded more quickly to 9/11 and there has already been one documentary on Flight 93 on the Discovery channel called The Flight that Fought Back and a moving drama shown in January on A+E called simply Flight 93.

Two different series were filmed and shown on different stations late last year.

Over There, written by CSI creator Steven Bochco and shown on Fox, was set among the ordinary rank-and-file soldiers in Iraq.

Given the channel which commissioned and broadcast it, it was never going to be a hardhitting, questioning Fahrenheit 9/11.

Rather it played out dramas and conflicts among troops on the ground with few references to the war itself or the reasons for it. It lumbered and was cancelled after just one season.

The Showtime channel, which is considered second to HBO in terms of the quality of its drama, made a 10-part series called Sleeper Cell, which was well-intentioned, but too lugubrious. It was also cancelled after a single season.

Set in Los Angeles in the midst of a Muslim terrorist cell, the premise was ambitious and thoughtful.

It attempted to explore the effect and influence of fundamentalism among a group of five men who meet in the US and form a sleeper cell. One is a Bosnian, whose family was murdered by Serbs, one a reformed French skinhead, another is a blond, blue-eyed American, whose parents were liberal Berkeley professors, another is a Saudi Jew and the fifth is an African American recently released from jail.

Fox has also aired the popular series 24, where the president of the US is portrayed as a heinous opportunist, and The Sopranos has been making more questioning references to some of the travelling mobsters Tony's gang does business with.

Theatre has also been a more vibrant interpreter of the social and political flux brought about as a consequence of the 9/11 attacks, with a significant number of plays on themes generated by that day and its ongoing consequences. A number of wellknown musicians have also been integrating the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the consequent huge divisions in American society into their material.

But for various reasons, the representation of 9/11 dramatically is not taken sufficiently seriously until a big studio makes a movie such as United 93. With Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck reaching the audiences they did, it has been argued in some quarters that Americans are ready to be more challenged politically by cinema. This may be true in the states on the east and west coasts, but not for the majority in the states in between.

Asking awkward questions During the second world war, Hollywood churned out scores of war-themed movies.

But these were, largely speaking, patriotic, feelgood gestures and not films for the ages.

?The movies of World War II were very much better at entertaining and consoling than making sense of what was going on, " said film historian David Thomson.

?Everyone felt the war was a just cause, so you didn't have to think about it too much . . . you certainly didn't ask awkward questions about what life would be like afterwards."

But while this first wave of films and documentaries might lack the psychological distance from their subject, they may contain the seeds for future historians attempting to understand how things unravelled to the extent that they did because of the Bush administration's response to 9/11.

We know we have to face choices in our society that have enormous consequences, " said Paul Greengrass. Perhaps this film will provoke a conversation. I don't just want people to come out of the cinema shocked and distressed."

Musicians are starting to raise their voices again in response to the war, three years after the Dixie Chicks were disgracefully bullied and their music boycotted by many influential US radio stations for criticising the planned invasion of Iraq. At a concert in London just before the invasion began, Texan Natalie Maines said to the audience, between songs, ?Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas."

By the time the comment was picked up in the US, there was hell to pay and Maines even received death threats. The remark sparked intense criticism from many Americans, on three different grounds: that Maines shouldn't be criticizing the nation's head of state while on foreign territory; that she shouldn't be criticizing the military's commander-in-chief while the country was on the verge of war; and that she shouldn't be making political statements that would offend the Dixie Chicks' culturally conservative audience base.

But the criticism had an enormous effect on the group and attempts to clarify it, and eventually her apology for the statement, just made matters worse and the boycott continued until quite recently. In one display of anti-Dixie Chick frenzy, former fans were encouraged to bring their Dixie Chicks CDs so that they could be crushed by a bulldozer!

Their colleagues in country music remained shamefully and inexplicably silent in the face of such outrageous bullying. Those who came to the defence of their right to an opinion were Bruce Springsteen and Madonna, but almost no one else of influence. Indeed, Madonna later backed down from plans to release her anti-war video American Life, which featured a Bush double being murdered by a hand-grenade.

Next month, the Dixie Chicks release a new album called Taking the Long Way, from which the single 'Not Ready to Make Nice' is their fight back at how they were vilified for expressing opposition to the Iraq invasion. With support for the war at an all-time low and artists raising their heads and voices, it's likely the single, and the band, will get a warmer response.

Neil Young is another artist who's mad as hell and his upcoming album, Living With War has songs like 'Let's Impeach the President', which features Bush's voice overlaid above a 100voice choir singing ?Flip Flop". Other sledgehammer subtle song titles include 'Looking for a Leader' and 'American the Beautiful'.

Young has periodically touched on political themes in his songs over the years. He railed against the first President Bush in 1989 with the song 'Rockin' In The Free World', but this is by far the strongest and most partisan.

Pearl Jam have also released an anti-war album called World Wide Suicide.

A time for talk This is a rich time for engaged filmmaking, precisely because the stakes are so high, " said Paul Greengrass. There is a time when silence is appropriate, but there is also a time for us to talk and remember and seek wisdom."

At a time when the White House is engaged in the Titanic equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs, the public will continue to expect artists and cinema to say something more about events in the world than pundits and politicians.

It is only reasonable, then, that they now begin to weigh in on the most significant events of the day.

While the handwringers in the American media are still obsessing that it might be too soon for cinema to reflect 9/11, filmmakers and movie-lovers everywhere else are more likely asking the question, ?What took them so long?"