Fearless (1993)
Peter Weir has directed some great, unique movies--Galipoli and Picnic at Hanging Rock are two of my favorites. So I watched this with curiosity at first. And then boredom. And then a kind of draining disappointment. I can see how the drama, and the various characters involved in it, might really draw someone in and move them. So this is just my own take on it, a fair balance to the others, I hope.
The shock of being in a plane crash is played out by Jeff Bridges as a young professional who survives. This is gripping enough in the first scenes. This survival is played out through Bridges over the next fews days as he visits other survivors and sees the range of their inabilities to cope. Throughout, Bridges is asked to play with a calm that at first seems to be a blank slate for our growing into his complexity. His own complete acceptance and almost joy at having survived seems to have no down side, except having to run from television cameras or stand on rooftops screaming. Normal things, I suppose. This is how we are made to see his mind working through the horror he has repressed.
But the blankness is a cover for an unresolved shock, and this doesn't unfold easily. Von Trier or Bergman or even Hitchcock might have made art out of this, but Weir can't pull it off. His earlier movies are gems of situation, of how groups of people behave within circumstances. Fearless is different in that it goes inward, trying to be about a person's mind. And yet, Weir still plays Bridges as if he were foremost a character among other characters. When we do go inward, it is mostly through his memories of the event, which are given predictable elements of fear and horror. (It's a plane crash, after all.) As for how Bridges copes, you will see either beatific gazes or screaming to himself.
The basic idea is great movie material, but I didn't find the psychology convincing. The writing is stilted and worn out before it starts. The narrative is broken up with cheap flashbacks and with irrelevant and unconvincing scenes of tacky lawyers looking for money. Clichés. Even the extended and manipulative ending, which by that point is so unnecessary and indulgent for all its fire and visions of heaven, just leaves you feeling battered.
Peter Weir has directed some great, unique movies--Galipoli and Picnic at Hanging Rock are two of my favorites. So I watched this with curiosity at first. And then boredom. And then a kind of draining disappointment. I can see how the drama, and the various characters involved in it, might really draw someone in and move them. So this is just my own take on it, a fair balance to the others, I hope.
The shock of being in a plane crash is played out by Jeff Bridges as a young professional who survives. This is gripping enough in the first scenes. This survival is played out through Bridges over the next fews days as he visits other survivors and sees the range of their inabilities to cope. Throughout, Bridges is asked to play with a calm that at first seems to be a blank slate for our growing into his complexity. His own complete acceptance and almost joy at having survived seems to have no down side, except having to run from television cameras or stand on rooftops screaming. Normal things, I suppose. This is how we are made to see his mind working through the horror he has repressed.
But the blankness is a cover for an unresolved shock, and this doesn't unfold easily. Von Trier or Bergman or even Hitchcock might have made art out of this, but Weir can't pull it off. His earlier movies are gems of situation, of how groups of people behave within circumstances. Fearless is different in that it goes inward, trying to be about a person's mind. And yet, Weir still plays Bridges as if he were foremost a character among other characters. When we do go inward, it is mostly through his memories of the event, which are given predictable elements of fear and horror. (It's a plane crash, after all.) As for how Bridges copes, you will see either beatific gazes or screaming to himself.
The basic idea is great movie material, but I didn't find the psychology convincing. The writing is stilted and worn out before it starts. The narrative is broken up with cheap flashbacks and with irrelevant and unconvincing scenes of tacky lawyers looking for money. Clichés. Even the extended and manipulative ending, which by that point is so unnecessary and indulgent for all its fire and visions of heaven, just leaves you feeling battered.