***SPOILERS***

Thick, greasy black smoke hangs over a field of green corn. A man is pushing his way through the corn, a baby in his arms; as he comes out into a debris-filled clearing we can see that something terrible has happened here. A woman is sitting on the groud, crying: he asks her "is this your baby?". She screams and grabs the baby, crushing it to her chest. We are witnessing the aftermath of a plane crash.

The man, ignoring the fire and ambulance crews, gets a lift to the local town, where he hires a car and just drives away. We learn that his name is Max Klein, and he is a San Francisco architect. Visiting an old friend, he has strawberry pancakes for breakfast, despite the fact that he is violently allergic to strawberries: nothing happens to him. Eventually he is tracked down via his credit cards and we learn that he has a wife and child back in the city, frantic after his disappearance from the crash site. An airline representative presents him with a train ticket back to San Francisco: he says he wants to fly, first class. Slowly the story pieces together. He was on an intercity flight with his business partner Jeff (John DeLancie) when the plane's hydraulic system malfunctioned. After the crash, in which Jeff was killed, Max led a group of survivors to safety through the smoke and flames and is now being hailed as a hero. Hounded by the press and hassled by his greedy lawyer, he withdraws from everything around him. He walks through his own life as a ghost, alienated from his wife and his young son. Since nothing can kill a ghost, he takes incredible risks - standing on the parapet of a skyscraper roof leaning out into the wind, crossing a busy road in front of oncoming traffic - and nothing touches him. There is a scene where Max is lying on his bed, eyes closed and suddenly we cut to a faraway jet, its contrail a crisp white slash across the blue sky. In his head, Max has never left the plane, but he cannot talk to anyone about what he feels. Until he meets Carla.

The airline psychiatrist, Dr Perlman (John Turturro), asks Max to visit another survivor of the crash, a woman called Carla, whose baby son, Bubble, was killed. Carla was holding the baby on her lap when the plane hit the ground, and with the impact he flew out of her grasp. She believes she let go of him, that it is her fault he died, and she has spiralled into a deep depression. Max visits her every day, talking to her, taking her out of the house and out of herself, and slowly a bond begins to grow between them that his baffled and angry wife, Laura, cannot understand. As his relationship with Carla deepens, things get worse and worse at home: he yells at his son and ignores Laura completely. Eventually, in an experiment to show Carla that she simply could not have held onto her child, that there was no way she could have saved him, he almost kills himself, and while he recuperates in hospital Laura asks Carla to stop seeing him. Carla goes to the hospital and explains to Max that she feels ready to start living her life again and that he must do the same: he cannot be a ghost forever. But when he gets home things are no better: he tries, but he has lost the ability to interact with others. He tells his wife he needs her to save him, but she does not know how, and the movie reaches its climax as she struggles to bring him back to his life.

Peter Weir has a gift for making utterly absorbing films, and Fearless is no different. The cast of characters is small, but we don't want it any bigger. Watching while this little group tries to work through the aftermath of such a cataclysmic event is fascinating. In a film like this, everything depends upon the quality of the acting, and here the performances are first class. Jeff Bridges is superb in the central role: Max seems externally to be coping with the shock of what has happened to him, but his serenity has an eerie feel, and in his eyes, his gestures, his body language, Bridges shows us what is really going on inside his head. As always, Rosie Perez is terrific, being allowed to play a deeper, more wounded character than usual. She makes Carla so real, so true, that it is easy to understand how Bridges is able to talk to her and no-one else. Isabella Rosselini is good as Max's frustrated wife, her distress over his accident turning to fury and resentment as he shuts her out of his life. The supporting performances are also top-notch: John Turturro gives his caring psychiatrist just the right amount of irritating touchy-feeliness, so we can easily understand why Max hates him and refuses to talk to him. And Tom Hulce is excellent as the grasping lawyer: he's not bad, just greedy, and his enthusiasm for his work is almost endearing. (He also has a great husky laugh, just like that of Dick Dastardly's dog Mutley).

Peter Weir is good at telling a story and creating beautiful-looking films. In Fearless he does something else: gives us the most realistic, most terrifying crash sequence I have ever seen. Flashbacks throughout the film show the passengers realizing something is wrong, the announcement we all hope we never hear, stewardesses collecting glasses and high-heeled shoes; but the actual crash is left till the end. Accompanied by the beautiful music of Gorecki's Third Symphony and the high whine of the plane plummeting into the ground, this is one of the most powerful cinema moments I have ever seen. I was watching this film with a group of friends and we were all struck dumb, staring riveted at the screen: the building could have fallen down around us and we would hardly have noticed. The fuselage rips apart; seats are torn out and punch through the cabin walls, their screaming occupants still strapped in; fire sparks and flows in a river through the cabin; hands reach out in the darkness and find nothing. It is utterly devastating.

Fearless is a wonderful film, nothing like as successful as it deserves. As a study of the effects of trauma on the sufferer and the people around him it is completely absorbing. The film-making is first class, as is the acting, and it is accompanied by a powerful and moving soundtrack. Highly recommended, with one caveat: don't watch it if you don't like to fly.

(c) Jennifer Mellerick 1999

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