The film opens with Washington (Whip) waking up after a heavy night of drinking, drugs, and sex with a flight-attendant. He swigs beer and snorts cocaine, and then flies a plane. He consumes three small bottles of vodka whilst in air. Due to turbulent weather and faulty mechanics, the plane heads into a nose-dive. Whip (instructing his co-pilot and a flight attendant) flies the plane into an inverted position allowing it to glide to a (relatively) safe landing: only 6 lives are lost in the crash.
When released from hospital, Whip retreats to his grandfather's abandoned house. He scours the house, pouring away bottle after bottle of alcohol, discarding marijuana: razing the vicinity of the substances which he depended upon before the crash. However, when he meets with an attorney and discovers that a toxicology report evidences the substances in his blood on the flight, and could lead to four life sentences for manslaughter: he returns to the bottle.
Zemeckis's focus now shifts to the mental and emotional affliction of substance-addiction. As I watched the ensuing scenes, I was uncannily reminded of the short-stories of one of my favourite writers - definitely my favourite American writer - Raymond Carver. Carver's stories often deal with the difficult subject of alcohol-addition. His style is all-inclusive, tackling everything from marital breakdowns, to ear-infections: documenting the ways in which alcoholism affects a sufferers ability to cope with the monumental and the mundane. This inclusiveness is reflected in Gatins's screenplay; we see shots of Whip struggling to change the television-channel, or rise from his chair - and equally, his inability to communicate with his ex-wife or forge a proper relationship with his son.
No matter where Whip is, or what he's doing - there is always alcohol paraphernalia present. Zemeckis insistently and deftly insures alcohol is always in the shot, always the focal point; as Whip goes to rescue Nicole (his love-interest) from her abusive landlord, he climbs the stairs beer-can in one hand walking stick in the other, wrestles him from her beer-can still in hand. When paying the landlord, he needs two hands to access his wallet - but tucks the can under his chin rather than relinquish it. He drives Nicole home, can in hand; receives a massage, bottle in hand; fills plane-oil [?!], accompanied by a bottle (you get the picture). Arguably, this could all be crafty product-placement, but I appreciate the incredibly subtle way in which Zemeckis highlights Whip's affliction: it is a cinematic trick that unconsciously insinuates the reality of Whip's addiction into the viewers consciousness. No matter how many times he vehemently, vocally denies his problem, the enumerated cans and bottles continue to litter each scenes, taciturnly filling-up the screen: material, tangible proof of a notoriously intangible, immaterial disease.
Whip's relationship with Nicole is also an interesting element of the film. Nicole is a heroin addict - yet she, unlike Whip, recognises and accepts her addiction (there's no way you can ignore it, really). The scene where Nicole confronts Whip about his alcoholism is emotionally-charged and compelling: he says she can't talk, considering her own problems, and she says, at least she's honest about them. This introduces some fascinating paradoxes; is accepting a problem - as the old cliche says - half way to solving in it? what, on the scale of addiction, is worse: heroin addiction, or alcoholism? what is the more ethical/honest/healthy way to fund said addiction (if 'healthy' is even an appropriate term to use here): tenuously up-keeping a dangerous, but glamorous high-profile career, or drifting through dead-end jobs, pornography and prostitution? Gatins and Zemeckis refuse to show sympathy on either side, or answer these questions: but they certainly raise them, and they hang in the air, poised and potent.
The most poignant scene of the film (tenser even than the high-octane plan-crash) is when Whip is left in a hotel-room, before his hearing. All alcohol has been removed from his room, he has been sober for eight days, and has nothing to do but wait until morning and try and sleep. He shaves, he eats, watches television. These mundane actions knowingly build up to the scenes climax (and seem to reflect the actions of many of Carver's characters, who take special care over their day-to-day actions, in order to try and relieve and redirect some of the pressure of their very un-ordinary, life-altering afflictions). As he tries to sleep, he hears a knocking noise. It is the door of the adjoining room. The room is open. The mini-bar is full. As we take stock of the rows and rows of tiny, glimmering bottles - tantalisingly refracted and infinitely multiplied by the mirrored panels of the fridge - along with Whip, the audience feels the full impact of the temptation that confronts him. One could almost, tangibly reach out and take a bottle. And that is what Whip does: smelling it, before replacing it, and closing the fridge's door. The audience feels an - albeit brief - sense of victory on Whip's behalf. However, I couldn't help but think, in that split-second, that his abstinence was disingenuous or half-hearted (fully recovered alcoholics do not, or should not at least, count down the minutes since their last drink, nor is recovery realistically viable in a mere eight days). As we see a close-up of Whip's hand quickly, and confidently grab the bottle, and hear the metallic clink of glass departing from the granite worktop resonate throughout the movie-theatre, the audience realises the Whip's demons remain unvanquished: they were simply hovering in the recesses of the darkened room.
There is undeniable comedy in the scenes of the following morning, as the officials struggle to prepare a horrendously drunk Whip for his public appearance, drafting in his drug-dealer to provide a line of cocaine to perk him up. Whip approaches the hearing with a calm confidence (brought about by the toxic cocktail he so recently consumed), yet it off-put by a small-child in the elevator, penetrating his facade with an innocent - but knowing - gaze, as Whip wipes dregs of cocaine from his nose. His confidence resumes at the hearing, when his suspicions about the plane's poor state are confirmed (it was always going to fall from the sky), and when his toxicology report is deemed void as a result of some crafty manoeuvres by his lawyer.
Yet, as the three errant vodka bottles (which only crew would have access to) are brought to his attention, Whip is torn. He has the perfect get-out-clause: the deceased flight-attendant (who he was sleeping with) had alcohol in her system, and was a documented alcoholic. Here, the major moral dilemma of the film emerges: do you lie to preserve your facade - to keep your wings, stay out of jail, avoid infamy, maintain the praise of the multitude, or tell the truth, to save your life - that which is unseen: your conscience, your moral integrity, your mental health. Whip chooses the latter: but it is not an obvious choice. We have watched him through the whole film, and his choices are - in the large part - wrong, and immoral: he regularly delights in getting off scott-free. Yet, his decision to do the right thing now doesn't seem incongruous, it is as if, as he says, he has 'reached [his] maximum limit of lies'. We see, not a man broken, but a man realising the limit of his capacity for wrongdoing: a man who, like a lot closeted alcoholics, can still ostensibly function and operate in society (can operate a plane, can save all the people on board from certain death) yet, has become incapable of operating morally. Importantly, Whip realises and recognises this incapacity, and can begin to recover from a disaster infinitely more sustained and affecting than a large, explosive plane crash (that's merely a blip) - can recover from the slowly simmering, everyday disaster that is alcoholism and the life of an alcoholic.
No comments:
Post a Comment