Word: fearless
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There's no God but there's you," gasps a bleary-eyed plane crash survivor to Max (Jeff Bridges), and sums up the dominant theme of Peter Weir's latest all-star release. Full of glitz, melodrama and unadulterated emotional manipulation, "Fearless" chronicles the psychological aftermath of a plane crash in the life of Max, a good-looking, successful and secretly tortured architect, and how the rest of the world hinges upon his mental wellbeing...
...film begins with Max emerging heroic and unharmed from a gory, chaotic crash site, suddenly convinced that he is beyond mortal concerns: fearless. He even informs God of this development: "You want to kill me but you can't." Feeling thus elevated, Max disengages from his former life, abusing his beautiful wife and son and flaunting various conventions of society. While Max gets his thrills from risking his life periodically and hanging out with other brush-with-death-survivor buddies, his devoted and one-dimensional wife (Isabella Rosellini) is apparently confined to the house, as well as to a limited...
There was always the whiff of the charlatan about John Cage. The puckish composer, audacious theoretician, stylish writer, subtle graphic artist, macrobiotic guru and fearless mushroom hunter was the impish personification of the 20th century avant-garde. Arch, soft-spoken and witty, Cage was passionately adored by his acolytes right up to his death at age 79 in 1992, and continues to be regarded by some as a kind of contemporary Beethoven, his influence ranging as far afield as Germany and Japan (where he is a demigod). And yet: Was there ever a composer of whom it can be said...
That's the great thing about Fearless -- its unexpectedness. The most one might expect these days in a movie about a plane crash is Airport '93. The ; best we might hope for in a study of survivors is psychological faith healing. But Rafael Yglesias has written what amounts to a meditation on mortality. In the process, he has provided director Peter Weir with a route back to his best vein, that of Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave, those curiously creepy movies in which ineffable, quite insoluble mysteries slowly insinuate themselves into ordinary life. Together, the filmmakers have...
CINEMA The explosions in Demolition Man almost drown out the futuristic satire. Fearless transforms a disaster story into a meditation on mortality. BOOKS The J.F.K. presidency gets a cool, fascinating analysis by Richard Reeves. MUSIC Jimmy Webb soars into the '90s with a lush and lyrical album. TELEVISION An adapted David Mamet play shows Jack Lemmon at his best...