FLIGHT

I was concerned after the opening of FLIGHT. It seems almost impossible to follow the harrowing, realistically rendered crash landing of a commercial jet. I can imagine a lesser filmmaker beginning in medias res, making us wait until the final deposition for a depiction of the titular flight, but Robert Zemeckis knows what he has in the central performance from Denzel Washington, and isn’t afraid of losing us in the following two hours. And, to be fair, there is a scene toward the end that I would argue is as electric as the opening, but I’m getting ahead of things.

Some FLIGHT spoilers after the jump.

Whip Whitaker (Washington, who, along with T. Hanks has been reminding the world that a real movie star takes chances) starts the most important day of his life to an alarm set to 7:14. He wakes in a hotel room with a nude woman (Nadine Velazquez), fields a call from his ex-wife soliciting private school money for their son, and has a balanced breakfast consisting of warm Miller High Life, half a joint and a fat rail of cocaine from a bedside table. Then there is a cut, from a shambled man snorting a line (itself a cool effect, with a camera dolly going from stable to hand-held in the span of one brisk inhalation) to a confident pilot striding down a hallway, highlighting the disparity between who this man is and what he projects. He can calmly make announcements facing a jet full of plain folks while pouring a triple screwdriver behind a thin wall. Control is everything to a pilot, and though Whip is clearly a mess of an addict, we are rarely allowed to see him out of control.

The script, by John Gatins, neatly side-steps many of the things it seems to be telegraphing. The head stewardess (Tamara Tunie) pesters Whip to join her family at a Sunday service.  The co-pilot (Brian Geraghty) is such a straight-arrow teetotaler, he later attests that on the morning of the crash Whip reeked of “gin…or something.” (His wife, whom we meet later in the hospital, is a bit much with her constant praising of Jesus and crucifix kissing, although we are seeing her through Whip’s eyes.) As the plane crashes, its wing clips a church’s steeple. A small gathering of Baptists are mere feet from being crushed by the falling jet, and they continue to gather at the crash sight to pray. The passengers on the plane are regularly referred to in the number of souls that were on board. The entire film is very much concerned with the state of Whip’s soul, and I for one am grateful that we do not get the oft threatened scene of him atoning in god’s house. Roger Ebert ended his review suggesting that the final line should have been the standard A.A. vomit “My name is Whip, and I’m an alcoholic.” reminding us once again why he is a successful critic, not screenwriter.

At the same time that the plane is going down, we meet Nicole (Kelly Reilly), an addict who promises her porn-producing dealer that she will not shoot up some particularly potent heroin, before promptly feeding it into the hole in her arm. Before she can level off with cocaine, she is overdosing, seemingly falling out after playing herself. She is taken to the same hotel as the crash survivors, where she meets Whip (as well as James Badge Dale as a man whose cancer has afforded him a spooky clarity) and begins a shaky relationship with him. She is really trying to straighten up, Whip is momentarily shaken up. He is quickly back to drinking when his union rep Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood) and company lawyer Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle) inform him that his toxicology report is dirty, and there is a strong likelihood of him spending some time in prison.

The relationship between Nicole and Whip is well observed, most of all concerning their addictions. The fact that she has no problem at all with his drinking, even when he is blotto, breaking coffee tables Chris Farley-style and passing out mumbling and drooling, but packs up and leaves the second she sees a single line in the hangar strikes me as particularly realistic. She actually wants this change, and though she may care deeply for Whip, she is not willing to risk her own stability for it. Her departure is abrupt, but that is not uncommon around someone as magnetic and repulsive as Whip.

Another abrupt departure comes from Harling (John Goodman), who picks Whip up at the hospital, then disappears for most of the film. Similar to the opening, where we see a damaged man and only later learn that he has a plane full of people in his hands, Harling’s introduction makes him seem like he is a friend who shares some of Whip’s vices. In my favorite scene in the film, he is revealed to be the source, as well as the nadir of the enabling that Anderson and Lang are willing to sink to. I suppose you could argue that these three make up the villains of the film, along with Whip’s addiction itself. Throughout the film, Whip has been lying to everyone he meets, asking others to lie for him, and lying to himself. He gets down to the wire, with one last lie between him and freedom. In the end, we leave Whip in a simultaneously low and high point. His life is shattered in one respect, but has begun healing in another. And when he embraces his son, it finally looks more like a hug than a grapple.