The movie “Flight”: a terrific portrayal of addiction. At least one reviewer doesn’t get it.
Flight, and a review of Flight
Robert Zemeckis, who directed, produced and/or wrote Romancing the Stone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the Back to the Future trilogy, Forrest Gump and a number of other enduring motion pictures, has given us in Flight one of the greatest portrayals of addiction ever. Denzel Washington portrays the extraordinarily skilled pilot Whip Whitaker, who has hidden decades of addictive use of alcohol and other drugs from everyone except those with whom he uses or from whom he buys. And he’s a hero.
The movie brilliantly portrays Whitaker’s heroism, drug use and the ability to function and hide such use. We often find early-to-middle stage alcoholism in bed with extraordinary behaviors, both good and bad. That the story line meshes his early-stage heroism and functionality with the late-stage symptom of a need to use during every waking moment can be forgiven, if only to show the unaware viewing public that Whitaker is clearly a full-on addict.
However, the portrayal of addiction in someone so functional and heroic was met with skepticism by some addiction unaware film reviewers. One example is film critic Chris Tookey’s review in the U.K.’s Daily Mail. In his ignorance of alcoholism he writes, “Zemeckis asks us to accept two or three things that struck me as dubious.” While actually lists five such things, Zemeckis gets it right on all counts.
The first is we’re supposed to believe “a pilot as out of control as the hero…would nevertheless be able to steer a stricken airliner to land, with minimal casualties, far better than any other pilot can in a simulator.” Actually, Mr. Zemeckis (who has portrayed alcoholism rather accurately in Death Becomes Her, Back to the Future, Real Steel, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Forrest Gump, along with a 1999 biography he directed entitled The Pursuit of Happiness: Smoking, Drinking and Drugging in the 20th Century) demonstrates deep insight into what addicts are capable of. They frequently are not only heroes, but also supremely competent. Both competency and heroism are highly efficient ways to inflate the ego, the need for which acts to drive both, since they are great ways to wield power, which in turn further inflates the ego. Consider WWII flying ace Pappy Boyington, the greatest athlete ever Jim Thorpe, baseball great Ty Cobb, golf pro Tiger Woods and countless others. Recovering addicts frequently admit having to practically learn their skills again when sober, as they learned them when drunk.
The second is, “We’re invited to accept the idea that his addictions have managed to pass unnoticed and unchallenged for years.” Tookey considers this unlikely, given that Whitaker slurs, walks unsteadily and falls over during much of the film. Sorry Mr. Tookey, but addicts frequently go undiagnosed for decades even by spouses. “Full House” child star Jodie Sweetin was married for five years to a cop who had no idea she was a meth addict for at least two of those years. Whitaker’s unsteadiness demonstrates that he is heading towards late-stage addiction; knowing that he now risked being outed as an alcoholic could quickly catapult him into the latter stages of his disease.
The third: “cocaine is a brilliant pick-me-up after wildly excessive binge-drinking,” an assertion in the film over which Tookey is wildly skeptical. Yet recovering poly-drug addicts admit they could take a particular combination of drugs with the goal of doing just the right thing for them when they needed or wanted it.
Fourth: “The film would end immediately if the pilot would only own up to his mistakes, and acknowledge that he is a risk to the public as well as himself.” This demonstrates extraordinary ignorance about the mindset of addicts, who see everything they do through self-favoring lenses. They can admit to their own failures only when long sober.
Finally, Tookey is unconvinced by the relationship between “the middle-aged alcoholic pilot and a much younger female junkie (Kelly Reilly),” because “both parties seem too self-obsessed to care about each other….” Mr. Tookey—that’s what addiction is all about; the addict is incapable of caring for another person when their love affair is with the drug. The relationship was purely for the convenience of each addict.
Tookey goes on to denigrate John Goodman’s performance as Whitaker’s dealer and the “preachy” screenplay, calling it an “over-extended infomercial for Alcoholics Anonymous.” Goodman was fantastic in the role and, far from being an infomercial for AA, Flight is a terrific portrayal of a highly functional alcoholic who ends up being a hero, even as he’s ruining relationships and, outside of the cockpit, destroying lives.
At the risk of turning this review into a “spoiler,” the movie’s magnificent ending was analogous to Evel Knievel’s thanking God he got sober even if only for the last six months of his life, because he finally got to know his son and his son got to know him. It’s a shame more movies—or critics—can’t get it right when it comes to portrayals of addiction. Flight gets it right at multiple levels—thank you Mr. Zemeckis.