Fearless

Year 15, Day 86 - 3/27/23 - Movie #4,387

BEFORE: Benicio Del Toro carries over again from "Things We Lost in the Fire", and I've now got my chain programmed through the end of May.  It's very tempting to try and go further, see if I can nail down a Father's Day film or two, maybe pick something for July 4, but I should try to just calm down for a while.  Too much time charting out possible paths means less time for watching movies and other things.  I wish I could have followed the Halle Berry path and watched "Moonfall", but that wouldn't get me to where I need to be on Easter Sunday. 

It's Day 27 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming, and today's themes are "Thrillers" (before 8 pm) and "School Movies" (8 pm and after.) Here's the line-up: 

6:00 am "Night Must Fall" (1937)

8:00 am "The Stranger" (1946)

10:00 am "Gaslight" (1944)

12:00 pm "Wait Until Dark" (1967)

2:00 pm "Suspicion" (1941)

4:00 pm "Strangers on a Train" (1951)

5:45 pm "The Bad Seed" (1965)

8:00 pm "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (1939)

10:00 pm "The Paper Chase" (1973)

12:00 am "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1969)

2:15 am "Blackboard Jungle" (1955)

4:00 am "Fame" (1980)

I can only claim 5 for sure today, those are "Gaslight", "Wait Until Dark", "Suspicion", "Strangers on a Train" and "Fame".  I watched the OTHER version of "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", the one with Peter O'Toole - does not count. Another 5 out of 12 takes me to 141 seen out of 306, down just a bit to 46%.

THE PLOT: A man's personality is changed after surviving a major airline crash.

AFTER: And I'm going to do it again tomorrow, not follow the most obvious link, which would be Jeff Bridges.  Sure, I could watch "The Giver" or "Kiss Me Goodbye", but neither of those get me closer to my Easter film, and neither of those films just won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.  My planning is a lot like playing pool, the cue ball's got to knock a ball in the pocket, but it's also got to come to rest in a good position to set up the next shot.  Ideally, anyway.  But this film "Fearless" has been on my chain for quite some time, so it's going to feel good to cross this one off tonight - PBS (Ch. 13 in NYC) ran this film a while back as part of their Saturday night "Reel 13" where they show a classic film, a short and an indie, all without advanced copyright protection and easily dubbed to DVD. Suckers. That's public TV for you. 

I sort of remember when this film came out in 1993, I was pretty busy back then trying to make. a name for myself in the movies, and I took a big leap to work for an independent animator, and I'm STILL at that job.  It's been a steady source of income all this time and I haven't had too many regrets, unless you count the last year when I've been hyper-aware of all the opportunities I maybe missed out on by staying in one place far too long. But that's neither here nor there - I also spent the last 30 years avoiding watching "Fearless" for some reason.  I think it's maybe that kind of film, so under-the-radar that you don't really feel like you've missed out by not watching it, there was really no sense of urgency, the kind you might associate with "Jurassic Park" or "Schindlier's List", which both came out that same year.  Like you HAVE to watch "Schindler's List", it's obligatory, and if you've never seen "Jurassic Park", why the HELL not?  But if somebody says, "Hey, you've never watched "Fearless"!" your appropriate response might be, "Nah, that's OK, I'm good."

Look, I'm just trying to be thorough - maybe there's nothing here, but I have to watch everything and kind of determine that for myself.  If there MIGHT be something here, well, I'm going to watch it in my very organized fashion, then cross it off the list.  I'm just not as busy as I was back in 1993, so I've got the time now. (Back then I was busy celebrating my 25th birthday and enjoying (?) life as a married man for the first time, out of two.  I think I'd bought the condo in Park Slope with my first wife and I was probably also getting my first experience as the treasurer for the building, something I did for 11 out of the 13 years I lived there.  Now, years later, it's easy for me to forget that I ran a building's finances for that long - collecting the maintenance fees, filing the annual protest of the city's tax assessment (even though the building was J-51 tax exempt at the time) and oh, those endless monthly board meetings!  But that was my old life, I was 25 and full of enthusiasm, unaware that my life was going to fall apart just three years later. 

Anyway, "Fearless" is about a man who survives a plane crash, and the effect that has on his outlook going forward. I don't look at the fear of flying, or the fear of heights, as an irrational fear - for me they both are very rational, because a plane crash or a fall from a great height WILL most likely kill you - and then even if you do survive, you could be so injured by either that you won't want to keep on living. But OK, for the purposes of this review, let's assume that there are plane crashes that you can walk away from, you don't get killed by the impact or the explosion or the burning jet fuel.  What happens next?  

For Max Klein, who led several passengers to safety through a cornfield, then refused medical attention at the crash site and then checked himself into a hotel for a shower and sleep, not long after he started to feel invincible.  Like God tried to kill him but wasn't able to do it.  Religion is a tricky thing, sure, once you start to tie God to things you might see aspects of his "plan" everywhere, when the more rational answer might be that there is no plan, there is no God, there's just a plane crash once in a while, but what do I know?  And of course there's a codicil, if God has a plan for us, why is that plan for some of us to die in plane crashes?  And if that's the plan, and God is all-powerful, then why couldn't he make that plan successful?  There's nothing God can't do, but Max found something that he couldn't do, so the simplest explanation there is that there's no God. QED.

As the title suggests, surviving the crash turned Max into a man without fears - or perhaps he faced the fear of death and accepted it, and then went on to face all of his other fears, too, like standing on top of a tall building, making out with women who aren't his wife, and eating strawberries.  Actually I've got a bone to pick with that last one, because if he's allergic to strawberries, eating them shouldn't count as a "fear", it's just good medical advice to not eat something that you're allergic too, because that can kill you.  But then, by extension of THAT, then there are really no fears - fear of flying is just avoiding plane crashes that can kill you, fear of sharks is just avoiding a predator that can eat you, fear of spiders, snakes, clowns - they're all just defense mechanisms to keep you from the things that can kill you.  

Look, I don't like air travel much myself, either, but if it means vacation, some risks have to be taken.  I've been on three Caribbean cruises and I have a rational fear of being on a boat, because I can't swim.  I have a rational fear of driving cars, so I haven't driven one in over a decade - but I go on long car trips with my wife, she drives, and so far, so good.  I just navigate and take naps, she's a real trouper, driving my ass around for hundreds of miles so we can enjoy different styles of barbecue.  But these things are all dangerous to some degree, planes crash but so do trains and cars, and boats can sink. You've gotta risk it to get the brisket. 

Max lost his business partner in the crash, and for reasons explained later, they weren't sitting together on the plane, Max switched seats to comfort a teen boy traveling alone - and that paid off for him, doing that good deed put him in the survivor zone, I guess.  That's karma - but another woman lost her young son because the flight attendant told her to just hold her son in her arms when his seatbelt wouldn't work - yeah, that turned out to be some bad advice. 

Max doesn't go to the meetings for the crash survivors and their families, but he does meet with Carla, the mother who lost her son.  They form a friendship (and maybe more?) rooted in their shared experience, while Max is also growing more distant from his wife, and Carla is on the outs with her husband because she heard him on the phone demanding a higher cash settlement for their dead baby.  Max is part of some legal action against the airline, along with his dead business partner's wife - and their lawyer keeps trying to get them more money, too, while apologizing over and over for being a terrible person.  Well, he's a lawyer, so he's probably not wrong - but come on, own it, man!  

Feeling immortal after surviving an accident, though - I suppose I can see it, but it still feels pretty irrational.  I suppose the two opposing possible reactions would be to either A) never get on another airplane again for the rest of your life, or B) figuring that the odds against ever being in a second plane crash might be astronomical, so you'd probably figure you could skate for the rest of your life and not have to worry about this ever again.  So this maybe explains why, when the airline offers Max a train ticket back to San Francisco, he instead holds out for a plane ticket back - first class, of course.  There you go, stick it to the airline, remember that they not only crashed your plane, they also lost your luggage!  Anyway, I can see why he didn't want the train tickets, trains aren't really safe either - there's always the chance that a falling plane will land on them, right?  

For a long while, flying first class was on my "bucket list" - I did that Comic-Con trip from NYC to San Diego for maybe 15 years straight, all coach, and it could be a bitch.  I'm a big guy, I have long legs, and spending 6 hours scrunched up in a seat that wasn't designed to hold me, well, it's no fun.  Plus I never liked going to the bathroom on a plane, so I always made sure to go right before getting on the plane, and if I had to pee somewhere over the Midwest, I'd just hold it for a few more hours. I used to spend all my credit card Sky Miles on those tickets to San Diego, or at least I'd spend them to get a reduced fare, but once I stopped making that trip, I've been using them for vacations with my wife - and her fear of flying is worse than mine.  SO when we flew to Dallas in 2017, we went first class. (Also our trips in 2018, 2019 and 2022) 

Here's how it usually works, we'll plan a trip (across the South or to Vegas) and I'll buy the trip with all my built-up Sky Miles - the trip won't be free, I don't have THAT many miles, but I can apply many miles to reduce the fare.  Then my wife (who makes more money than I do) tends to upgrade the tickets to first-class.  And it's NOT just about being comfortable in the cabin, or having more drinks or more legroom (though those things are nice...) there are other benefits to having a first-class fare, starting with shorter check-in lines at the airport.  We've been in PACKED airports where we felt it was so crowded we were probably going to miss our flight, but then that first-class ticket gets us past MOST of the crowd, into the "Preferred" check-in lane.  Also, the first luggage that gets unloaded from the plane is the first-class luggage, so our bags come down on that little carousel first, we don't have to sit there wondering when we're going to see our bags - so we could save almost an hour on each end of each flight this way!  

Well, I've done it now, I've given away our big travel secret - while most people from our flight are still waiting for some sign of their luggage, we're already in the shuttle bus to the car rental place, eager to start our vacation.  For us, it's worth the upgrade - and we're spoiled now, we simply can't go back to flying coach. I mean, I would if I were flying by myself, but for her, she needs the comfort of first class and the unlimited beverages.  Max Klein flew coach, and just look at what happened to him!

Also starring Jeff Bridges (last seen in "The Last Summer"), Isabella Rossellini (last seen in "Enemy"), Rosie Perez (last seen in "The Dead Don't Die"), Tom Hulce (last seen in "Jumper"), John Turturro (last seen in "Gloria Bell"), Deirdre O'Connell (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), John De Lancie (last seen in "Gamer"), Debra Monk (last seen in "Prelude to a Kiss"), Spencer Vrooman, Daniel Cerny, Eve Roberts, Robin Pearson Rose (last seen in "What Women Want"), Cynthia Mace, Randle Mell (last seen in "Cookie's Fortune"), Kathryn Rossetter (last seen in "The Night We Never Met"), Molly Cleator, Rance Howard (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Sally Murphy (also last seen in "Prelude to a Kiss"), Steven Culp (last seen in "The Last Word"), John Towey, Stephanie Erb (last seen in "The Little Things"), Rondi Reed (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), William Newman (last seen in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1981)), Don Boughton, David Carpenter (last seen in "Gun Shy"), Rome Owens.

RATING: 5 out of 10 pairs of shoes collected from passengers (umm, why?)