It’s been 12 years since the release of Robert Zemeckis’s last live action film, Cast Away. So I suppose that’s reason enough for us to all pay attention to his new film, Flight, the story of an airline pilot named Whip Whitaker (played with unsurprising depth by Denzel Washington) who pulls off a daring emergency landing, only to find that the aftermath of the crash brings out all his personal demons.
After seeing the film, I talked to Zemeckis about the film and how it fits into his long, illustrious career. No doubt everyone has heard of his earlier classics, including the Back To The Future trilogy, Forrest Gump and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But it might be easy to forget that he was also the man behind several recent motion-capture films, namely The Polar Express, Beowolf and A Christmas Carol. Though it may seem odd to think that this new digital technology is being pioneered by a director of a past generation, Zemeckis insisted that at the end of the day, “They’re all the same. Movies are movies.” It almost seemed as though he were asking us to forget his past works. Given how iconic they are, this is no easy task.
But for a moment at least, I’ll try to focus just on his present work. Flight is a well-constructed film; there’s no doubt about that. It navigates its own immense moral gray areas with grace, sometimes to dramatic effect (as in the interactions between Captain Whip and his ex-wife and son) and sometimes to comedic effect (as in the few short scenes with Whip’s pusher, played by John Goodman).
The audience is ultimately presented with not one, but two crashes: the visceral, adrenaline-pumping destruction of a commercial jet and the intimate, heart-wrenching deconstruction of a true-to-life hero.
For me, the greatest triumph of Flight is the ease with which Zemeckis guides the audience through a series of very heavy, loaded events without ever really inviting us to judge. It is as though he is suggesting that our role in this increasingly morally ambiguous modern world isn’t to condone or condemn, but merely to observe. We are voyeurs to Whip’s journey.
In fact, when asked what he wanted the audience to leave the theater with, Zemeckis responded that you just have to “keep them feeling something. That’s the whole point.” The film’s ending, which struck me as very similar to that of Cast Away, is clear evidence of this fundamental goal.
It’s a bleak but somewhat optimistic world that Zemeckis creates, one in which he says, “Every character, in their own way, is searching for truth.” Personally I can’t help but think that even after multiple decades in the industry, Zemeckis is still on that search himself.
Interestingly enough, I find the story of Robert Zemeckis more interesting than the story of Captain Whip Whitaker. He’s of the old-school, Spielbergian crew, but he’s also on the cutting, controversial edge. When asked whether or not there is still a place for 35mm film in the industry, Zemeckis responded, “No. No. No. It’s gone." He went on to explain that he believes soon digital technology and live-action film will be melded so closely together that it will become increasingly hard to tell the difference between the two. Why then would he choose to make a film that seems so much like a return to his old style?
It’s a mystery to me. Perhaps that is why Flight just doesn't seem to ever fully hit that cathartic moment. It spends too long on familiar territory to feel as fresh or groundbreaking as Zemeckis's works of the past few decades. He never let on to it, but I have a hunch that this film was born from a brief spell of nostalgia. For this reason I find it very hard to comply with Zemeckis's request to forget the past.
The real charm of Flight is seeing the reflection of a titan of industry on his continual search for truth. Denzel Washinton gave a great performance, but Robert Zemeckis gave an even better one.