Fearless Review
by Scott Renshaw (AS DOT IDC AT forsythe DOT stanford DOT edu)November 7th, 1993
FEARLESS
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1993 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Rosie Perez, Isabella Rossellini, John Turturro, Tom Hulce.
Screenplay: Rafael Yglesias.
Director: Peter Weir.
Peter Weir is a director whose best work has ventured into the darker corners (PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, THE LAST WAVE); Jeff Bridges is an actor whose best work has involved loners or characters on the fringe (THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS, THE FISHER KING). The collaboration of these two individuals, along with one of the fall's most compelling trailers, gave me high hopes for FEARLESS. It only delivered halfway. FEARLESS contains a handful of gripping moments and one outstanding performance by Bridges, but it also has some hollow interpersonal moments and a lack of focus that holds it back from real greatness.
Bridges is Max Klein, a San Francisco architect who walks a way from a devastating plane crash with a single scratch, and having saved several other passengers. Afterwards, Max finds himself possessed of a surreal peace, a sense that he has triumphed over death. His reaction baffles disaster psychologist Bill Perlman (John Turturro), as well as Max's wife Laura (Isabella Rossellini), who finds herself unable to relate to him. Dr. Perlman tries introducing Max to fellow survivor Carla Rodrigo (Rosie Perez), a devoutly religious woman thrown into a severe depression by the death of her infant son in the crash. While Max begins to draw Carla out, he remains unable to connect with anyone else, leaving his friends and family to wonder whether he'll ever return.
FEARLESS begins and ends, quite literally, with a bang. Max's emergence from the smoking wreckage of the crash, holding a baby and followed by other survivors, is a haunting and marvelously crafted scene. Indeed, FEARLESS maintains an intense, hypnotic energy for the first fifteen minutes, as Max's odd new persona takes hold. Then, rather abruptly and much to the worse, it shifts gears into fairly run-of-the-mill family drama. Max alienates his wife and son; wife Laura clings with a tenacious optimism that eventually he'll snap out of it. This tangent of the story doesn't work for two basic reasons. One, Laura isn't all that interesting, and Rossellini doesn't succeed in projecting any warmth or concern. Second, Max is such a jerk that I felt everyone would have been better off if he had just left. He's a man who has turned his trauma into carte blanche to treat everyone around him with a divine condescension, a palpable impression that their experience of life can't be as pure as his. Screenwriter Rafael Yglesias, adapting his novel, doesn't have the guts to really attack Max's arrogance, and Weir lets his Christ imagery (Max probing a wound in his side; Max making mud from his saliva) just sit there without any irony.
The story picks up steam again once Max and Carla link up. Their relationship is handled delicately, and avoids the too obvious step into romance. Bridges and Perez convey a kind of unspoken communication which punches home how stranded these survivors feel in a world of people who can't possibly understand. But again there are swings into scenes without a note of truth, like an awkwardly acted group therapy session. There's also a distracting and obvious swing at ambulance-chasing lawyers personified by Max's attorney (Tom Hulce). By the time FEARLESS hits its wrenching climax, a flashback to the moment of the crash wonderfully scored by Maurice Jarre, I felt as though I had been through a ride as bumpy as the passengers on that plane had.
While Max Klein's character may not have endeared itself to me, Bridges' performance did. Like he did in STARMAN, Bridges carries himself like an alien among us, but this time an alien with some smugness. It is he who takes an unlikable character and invests him with some caring. Max really believes he can save people, but he doesn't understand that he's obsessed with his new self- identification as a savior. It is only when he tries to take Carla with him--rather dramatically--that he comes to a certain understanding. This performance shores up my judgment of Bridges as the best American leading actor around, and it almost holds FEARLESS together on its own. However, FEARLESS takes its metaphysics too seriously, and doesn't keep its eye on what works best: the reactions of two survivors to a world now seen with different eyes.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 survivors: 5.
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Scott Renshaw
Stanford University
Office of the General Counsel
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
