The Benefits of Becoming a Psychopath

1001 Movies To Watch Before Your Netflix Subscription Dies, Part 45
Peter Weir (director) & Rafael Yglesias (writer), Fearless

Business executive Max Klein (Jeff Bridges) has become a media icon after being photographed walking unharmed away from a major airplane crash. Other survivors extol his bravery, his calming influence, and his leadership under pressure. But questions start surfacing: why is Max averse to answering FAA investigators’ questions? Why is he reluctant to contact his wife and son? What’s with his strange obsession with fellow survivor Carla Rodrigo (Rosie Perez)?

Australian filmmaker Peter Weir’s American career has fluctuated wildly. At times, he’s made critical and commercial darlings like Witness and Dead Poets Society; other times he’s favored more hermetic content, like The Mosquito Coast, or this strange outing. Based on a novel by Rafael Yglesias, who also adapted the screenplay, this movie became a critical darling, but went almost unwatched by general audiences. Which is a crying shame.

What’s the opposite of a traumatic reaction? Because that’s what Max has. Surviving a catastrophe against all odds, he suddenly becomes convinced nothing can hurt him. He contacts an old girlfriend and reopens old wounds; to showcase his perceived invincibility, he eats a strawberry in front of her, despite a lifelong allergy. Both events prove him right. Despite risking further hurting himself, physically and psychologically, he emerges unscathed.

The people around Max don’t share his enthusiasm. His wife Laura (Isabella Rossellini) watches his showboating antics with increasing perplexity. The widow of Max’s business partner (Deirdre O’Connell), who didn’t survive, demands answers, but Max proves evasive, refusing to explain his actions during the crash. People who once loved and trusted Max watch him behaving like a stranger and can only watch, tearfully, as his grandiosity becomes dangerous.

Only Carla continues to enjoy Max’s confidence. Though strangers before the crash, their survivor status creates a bond that transforms them both. Except, where Max believes himself invincible, Carla has become paralyzed with near-constant terror. And with good reason: though she walked away without a scratch, her baby, flying unsecured before child safety seats became mandatory, was killed. Carla believes herself a failure as a mother and a woman.

The airline’s pet psychologist, Dr. Perlman (John Turturro), begins shadowing Max and Carla, trying to understand their perverse bond. There’s no indication these two, who are both married, have a romantic connection; they seem more like brother and sister. But as they become more engrossed with their shared trauma, and their reactions become more like images in a funhouse mirror, Perlman worries they’re compounding one another’s injuries.

Jeff Bridges walks nonchalantly away from disaster in Fearless

Critics have acclaimed Jeff Bridges’ performance in this movie. As Max, he moves from mere confidence, to aplomb, to almost messianic grandiosity, his faith in his own indestructibility making him loud and swaggering. Paradoxically, the more unbreakable he believes himself, the less empathy Max has for others. He simply can’t see how his reckless actions impact others. He is becoming, in short, psychopathic.

Weir and Yglesias’ storytelling turns on the failure of absolute moral thinking. Max thinks he doesn’t need to fear anything anymore, which makes him destructive to anyone around him. Meanwhile Carla, plagued with survivors’ guilt, sees reason to fear in every circumstance. Both become extreme versions of their former selves, and importantly, each thinks they need to “cure” the other. They’re unable to find balance between their moral extremes.

Throughout most of the movie, we don’t see something very important: the crash itself. Though the moments before and after transform everyone involved, and their families, we don’t see the actual event. Because we only understand the catastrophe through its survivors’ reports, we wonder who to trust. (This is only compounded when Max’s attorney encourages him to exaggerate what happened, to extract a lucrative settlement from the airline.)

Only when Max and Carla address the catastrophe directly do we see what happened—and, in that moment, we finally see the truth our protagonists can’t admit to themselves. We finally start seeing Weir and Yglesias’ themes emerge, of how human life is balanced between destructive extremes. Fear and bravery, individual and community, control and luck. Our characters have flailed badly because they’re unable to find the balance between extremes.

Again, this movie collapsed on release. Its weird, philosophical premise didn’t permit TV-friendly marketing, and admittedly, its final three minutes flinch from their possible conclusions. Yet artistically, it remains a high point for its participants’ careers, a moment they committed themselves to something ambiguous, even dangerous, and stridently uncommercial. It pushes its characters to the poles of human limit, then encourages us to help them work their way back home.