Flightplan

Fightplan is a negligible film, but it is interesting to see how much the context of the September 11 terrorist attacks informs it. I have three or four thoughts about the film. First is that Jodie Foster, a very fine actress, does not change her facial expression even once in the film. This must have been contract work for her. It makes Panic Room look like high art. Second is that there is little suspense in the film, owing primarily to its formulaic nature and the failure of the director to do something new or innovative with the formula. We’ve seen this film a hundred times, nay a thousand. Third (and this is the most interesting point) is the way the film fetishizes the airplane in which almost all the action takes place. If anything, it is a Gothic airplane, with hidden corridors and rooms, unknown passageways, hidden coffins and surprises, designed with intricate and loving fascination. The airplane is by far the most interesting element in the film, and it enables the cinematographer to do some innovative camera work. The closing credits scroll across a background of digital design plans for the airplane, and they are hypnotically fascinating. It is too bad that the rest of the film fails to measure up.

Like a number of films and books of recent months, Flightplan is a reaction to and commentary on the 9-11 terrorist attacks. It is, first of all, set in an airplane, a huge jetliner, itself a potential weapon of destruction, under threat of a terrorist bombing. One small element of suspense comes from the front row of the economy class section of the airplane, where a group of middle-eastern passengers sit. We are clearly meant to wonder whether they are hijackers, and they are the frequent object of insults from non-middle eastern passengers sitting nearby. When the action starts to flag, the camera quickly switches to the swarthy glowering face of one of these middle-eastern passengers. In one of the few deft touches in this film we the members of the audience gradually come to realize that these middle-easterners are fully aware of how the others look at them, and they are afraid for their safety.

A number of films from the 1950s used children in danger to represent adult fears about the cold war and nuclear holocaust. This film uses a mother on an airplane desperately searching for a missing child that no one believes exists to express 2005 fears about the unstable and threatening world introduced to America by the 2001 terrorist attacks.