Actor takes to skies
Actor plays boozed-up pilot in latest flawed-character role
Denzel Washington portrays troubled pilot in Flight.
LOS ANGELES – Denzel Washington earned his one and only best actor Oscar for the emotionally crippled cop in Training Day. Now, Washington can add his alcoholic airline pilot in Flight to his memorably flawed list.
Opening Friday, the Robert Zemeckis film chronicles the aftermath of a commercial plane crash when an investigation into the equipment malfunction also reveals Captain Whit Whitaker (Washington) consumed drugs and alcohol before take off.
Co-starring is Kelly Reilly. She plays a recovering addict who falls for Washington’s pilot. John Goodman portrays the pilot’s buddy and his enabling dealer. Don Cheadle is the lawyer trying to defend the pilot, and Bruce Greenwood shows up as the pilot’s friend and union representative hoping to get him off the hook.
While Zemeckis is keen to present an ensemble feel to the proceedings, there is no doubt Washington’s performance drives the story.
And in case we don’t get the significance, the opening 10 minutes underscores two things in a very excruciating way: Washington’s pilot averts a disaster and he is smashed as he does it.
Fear-of-flying folks should beware, as well: The disabled plane sequences are agonizingly detailed, and the fictional John Gatins screenplay is based on fact.
Still, Washington was mostly committed to the project because of the dialogue, and what it had to say.
“If it ain’t on the page it ain’t on the stage,” said Washington, 57, at a Beverly Hills hotel. “I read tons of scripts, and I know it’s very rare, but this is like a Eugene O’Neill play — the tears are on the page.”
Zemeckis knew that Washington was one of the few actors in the business who could bring the words to life in a real and honest way.
As the convergence of coincidence would have it, they both became interest in doing the movie about the same time.
Indeed, Zemeckis had spent the last 12 years delving into the motion-capture world of special effects with films, The Polar Express and Beowulf. So he was looking for a change of pace when he stumbled upon the Flight script. After the 2010 productions, Unstoppable and The Book of Eli, Washington completed the action flick Safe House, then responded to Flight’s emotionally intricate demands.
Signed up and raring to go, they met a few weeks before filming in Atlanta, which was their base of operations. Together, they worked out the performance arc, and by the time they started shooting they felt confident.
The director admitted, however, that he was still amazed by the depth of the Academy Award winner’s performance. “It’s devoid of any vanity,” noted Zemeckis. “He showed how talented and gifted he is with this incredibly powerful screen presence.”
Indeed, the scenes showing the pilot’s binge drinking and downward spiral after the crash landing are difficult to observe. They must’ve been more difficult to portray, but not necessarily.
“People say, ‘What’s the hardest part of a movie? and I always say, ‘I don’t know,’” said Washington. “I guess if you are on a movie, and it’s like the third day, and you are going, ‘How many more do we have to go?’ and it’s 117, then that’s a tough movie for me. (Flight) was an adventure.”
His latest role might even lead to another Oscar nomination. He already has two; supporting actor award for Glory and lead actor for Training Day. He also received Oscar nods for Malcolm X and The Hurricane.
Certainly, the Flight pilot is just as vividly complex, but don’t ask Washington to deconstruct his emoting.
“Those questions are kind of hard for me because I don’t analyze what I’m doing,” he said. “I’m not sitting outside myself watching. I am much more practical.”
He did confirm that he spent weeks with pilots in a flight simulator learning the cockpit procedures and how to handle the radio chatter with air traffic controllers. “I wanted it all to seem second nature to me,” Washington said.
For one demanding s equence, Washington had to be filmed upside down in the simulator. That scene occurs when the experienced pilot inverts the plane into a glide after the aircraft loses hydraulics, pitch and vertical control. It’s tough to watch. “But fun to do,” he said.
Coping with the vacillation between right and wrong in Flight might be just as difficult for filmgoers. But Zemeckis said “the moral ambiguity” counts as a key antihero device.
However, Washington tended to be more simplistic in his explanation.
“I think that everybody is covering their own behinds is what it was,” said Washington.
“That’s the pilots (union), and the airline. I don’t know if it is so much that they thought he is a great hero as it is they need him to be one in order to fulfil their agenda.”