Well, I was not expecting this. Seemingly forgotten in Peter Weir's filmography right before what might be his most beloved film, The Truman Show, Fearless is a character study with certain operatic notes to it. It's a performance based film, centering on the acting chops of its two main stars, supported by an intelligently written script by Rafael Yglesias (based on his own novel) and Weir's strong direction.
The film is a character study of a man who completely changes after a plane crash, but we hardly see any of him pre-crash. The film starts with the immediate aftermath of the crash with Max (Jeff Bridges) walking around the cornfield surrounding the wreckage holding a baby in his arms. He's looking out over the wreckage like he's above it all, calls a cab, and drives from Bakersfield to Los Angeles to visit an old friend without mentioning the crash at all. The airline's representatives catch up with him and take him home, but the man who walks into the house he shares with his wife Laura (Isabella Rossellini) is not the man who walked out a couple of days before. The most physical change is that he no longer has an allergic reaction to strawberries. He's also uninterested in the life he had led before, wandering the streets of San Francisco on his own, even daring God (or the Universe, but it's probably God) to strike him down as he crosses a busy street. He is fearless, from a certain point of view, and that he's actually terrified of real life, running away from situations that make him confront who he was before the accident, shows that the film isn't as cloyingly simplistic as its poster implies.
Max gets contrasted with Carla (Rosie Perez), another survivor who lost her nearly two-year-old boy in the crash. Consumed with guilt and unable to bring herself to live her life again, much to the dismay of her husband Manny (Benicio del Toro). Taken to her to try to help by the psychiatrist hired by the airline, Dr. Perlman (John Turturro), Max and Carla develop a deep connection fairly quickly as he offers up his own sense of immortality and invulnerability to give her some level of protection. What develops is a kind of love, an intimate and platonic love as Max opens Carla up to living life again while the experience forces Max to confront the death he's experienced in the past. This is the core of the film, and it ends up working wonderfully well in no small part because the performances of both Bridges and Perez are wonderful, perhaps some of the best in Weir's films.
There are a couple of other little subplots running around at the same time. The most prominent involves Max's lawyer Brillstein (Tom Hulce), a scummy guy who is trying to craft Max's experiences on the airplane in such a way as to maximize the payout from the airline and insurance company. He ends up representing Carla as well, and his befuddlement at both Max's insistence on strict truth (which, considering what we later see in the flashbacks shows he was actually lying) and Manny's insistence on maximizing payouts ends up a light, and uncomfortable, source of comedy.
The other major subplot is Laura trying to reach this changed man she's married to. It's all new and different, and it seems like these changes are going to split them apart forever. This is anchored by Rossellini, at least as good an actress as her mother, who gives Laura a real emotional basis for facing these changes, watching the household she built with a man fall apart because he spends more time with a boy from the plane than his own son and a woman from the plane than his own wife. It's made all the worse when Max, trying to figure out his feelings for everything, admits that he loves Carla. This only works with a limited number of expressions for different kids of love (if this were done in Greek, it'd get cleared up real fast), but the pain Laura feels, watching her husband change and grow more distant, and then expressing deep emotions for another woman, hurts.
The core of Max's problem, though, is that he's having a crisis of identity, and this is where the film gets really special to me. The implication that Max has some kind of special relationship with God comes to the forefront in the final act of the film. We watch as Max relives the final moments of the plane in flight, immediately after his revelation that he was going to die and he had nothing to fear anymore, and he walks through the turbulent cabin offering solace and even safety to those he passes, implying that he's a tool of something greater. The specifics aren't important (though, considering the prevalence of Catholic imagery, especially around Carla, it doesn't seem like a big leap to say it's the Catholic God specifically), but Max really is a tool, given a new life to help those around him caught up in this tragedy, leaving only Carla once that accident is over.
Weir handles the whole thing with his normal mixture of professionalism and awe at the power of something we can't see. This has been evident since Picnic at Hanging Rock and manifested in different ways throughout his career, but this might be the first time it's almost explicitly religious (Witness is more about secular powers, but The Mosquito Coast gets closest otherwise). Weir handles it with this delicate touch that allows the connection without making it obvious in a preachy way. Maybe it does end up going a bit too far in its final moments, but I was so on board with the film I only cared a little that it did.
This is a gem of Weir's very strong career. It's one of the only movies of his I hadn't seen before starting this run, and I was more than pleasantly surprised.
