FEARLESS: Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini, Rosie Perez, Tom Hulce, John Turturro. Rated R (profanity, violence)
Movie section front page
Deseret News front page
By Chris Hicks
Deseret News movie critic
The disorienting opening moments of "Fearless" find Jeff Bridges grasping the hand of a young boy and carrying a baby in his other arm as he walks out of a smoky cornfield in central California, with several other people in line behind him.
As the camera moves about and eventually pulls up for an overhead shot of the overall scene, we discover that these people are survivors of a horrible plane crash.
Bridges locates the baby's mother, allows paramedics to take the boy away and promptly hails a cab, asking to go to the nearest motel. Then he rents a car and drives to his old hometown to look up an old girlfriend.
During these opening moments, it becomes apparent that Bridges is in a bizarre state of shock — and he remains that way throughout the entire film, as he both revels in and is repulsed by the reactions of others to his predicament.
Bridges is a survivor who saw his best friend and business partner killed in the crash. But instead of grief, he seems to have an inexplicable sense of exuberance, as well as a feeling that he is invincible. The latter prompts him to stroll through busy traffic, dance on the ledge of a high-rise building, eat strawberries (despite a serious allergy to the fruit) and even drive a car head-on into a concrete wall.
As he goes through all of this in a terribly lonely state, no one seems able to reach him — neither his loving wife of 16 years (Isabella Rossellini); his gentle, airline-provided therapist (John Turturro); nor his money-grubbing, self-effacing lawyer (Tom Hulce).
But in the interim, Bridges does reach out to someone else, Rosie Perez as another survivor of the crash, a devout Catholic whose baby was thrown from her arms upon impact. She is in a deep state of depression, almost catatonic, when Bridges contacts her. And eventually, he is able to reach her and help her come to terms with the tragedy. She, however, seems to be unable to return the favor.
Director Peter Weir ("Dead Poets Society," "Witness"), working with a script by Rafael Yglesias (based on his own novel), goes back to his early film roots with "Fearless," employing the mysticism associated with his earliest hits, "Picnic at Hanging Rock" and "The Last Wave."
That element perfectly suits the material here and Weir provides the film with several stunning set-pieces. The most affecting may be a quiet moment when Perez, in a shopping mall, finds herself drawn to a baby that is in its mother's arms. Perez walks up to the child, smells his hair and then slowly reaches out to him with a hesitant hand.
Perez delivers a star-making performance, and the supporting cast is also excellent (especially Turturro, in a nice, understated way). The one odd choice here seems to be Hulce, whose comic-relief lawyer seems cartoonish and a bit out of place.
The film's anchor, however, must be Jeff Bridges, and he offers a remarkable portrait of a wounded man who is having trouble coming back to planet Earth. But as Yglesias has written Bridges' character, we simply don't have enough information to feel one way or the other about him. While we sympathize with his plight, he is a bit obnoxious at times. To fully understand what he has become, it might be helpful to understand what he was. And we have very little information about his life before the crash.
Still, the film offers enough poignant moments, and a couple of very powerful ones, to successfully demonstrate the many faces of grief, and how important it is to get past the tragedies and get on with life.
"Fearless" is rated R for considerable (and some wildly inappropriate) profanity, along with the plane-crash violence.
© 1993 Deseret News Publishing Co.