- Also Known As:
- The Passenger
- Year:
- 1975
- Countries:
- Predominant Genre:
- Drama
- Director:
- Outstanding Performance:
- Premiss:
- A frustrated war correspondent assumes the identity of a dead businessman while working on a documentary in Chad, unaware that he is impersonating an arms dealer with connections to the rebels in the civil war he is unsuccessfully trying to cover.
- Themes:
- Alienation
- Christianity
- Compassion
- Destiny
- Empathy
- Grieving
- Guilt
- Humanity
- Identity
- Loneliness
- Narcissism
- Solipsism
- Stereotyping
- White culture
- White supremacy
- Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:
- Unknown
- Review Format:
- DVD (extended 2005 version)
[Passenger]
Reflective movie about identity: An angst ridden journalist swaps passports with a dead man only to find he is now a gunrunner wanted for supplying arms to terrorists!
This is classic out-of-the-frying-pan and into-the-fire stuff enlivened by an emphasis on ones destiny apparently being unavoidable. This, even moreso, the harder one tries to control ones own fate: It would seem that what happens to us is more determined by our character than by our stars.
Jack NICHOLSON rises admirably to the difficult challenge of playing an inherently self-reflexive part. He plays a man playing a new emotional role unfamiliar to him as he himself is within the wider context of the film, as a professional film actor.
The theme of playing a part drives the narrative and inevitably leads to endless speculation and existential introspection on the part of the viewer as much as it does on the part of the characters actually involved in the drama.
.JPG "Opens in Current Window/Tab…")
When one is in hiding from who one was – and from others, in the process – one is also trying to find out who one really is. Thus, the central character flees others yet does so in a car that sticks out like a sore thumb! But the hiding aspect of this activity makes this difficult since it involves telling oneself lies about fresh starts and new beginnings – when one can only start from where one already is, nowhere else – without lies. For others, this is very confusing because it is a covert, internal attempt at change; albeit one leading to overt behavioral changes. The motivation for such an attempt can be obscure if the internal and the external share no apparent linkage.
The problem this film highlights is not the wanting to change, but trying to be someone you are not rather than who you really are. That appearance and essence must be fully integrated for change to be effective lends the movie the tragic air it has no intention of shirking.
The film also highlights a particular problem of middle class life in that it relies heavily on others for an income – teachers, lawyers, doctors, journalists, politicians, etc. So much so that if those others took their own advice these jobs would cease to exist. The service providers know this, so must conceal their resulting fears and keep those less well-educated than themselves in ignorance - or lose salary. This degrading fear leads to emotional detachment and anomie.
Such a social structure entails a lack of self-determination and affective parasitism that leads to a sense of purposelessness. It explains why such professions develop a resentful condescension aimed at those they pretend to help (& those they pretend to be better than) for the dependent relationship they attempt to conceal by that very snobbery.
The analogous colonialism shown here failed precisely because it never broadened the horizons of the well-traveled colonialists – if it had, such colonialism would have failed much sooner. It only made them believe that wherever you go, the people simply wish to be like you. Such a narcissistic and solipsistic view is simply an attempt to project ones own sameness on the world and refuse to admit that people elsewhere are different in their outlooks. Part of the issue addressed here is that White culture uses its White supremacism as a form of self-definition that, given the various failures of White imperialism, reveals the widespread emptiness of that culture.
However, you never can run from yourself, so the central character here finally realizes he has no self; and ends up searching desperately for it.
Existential angst was never better presented than here: A man learns to see, yet wishes he were still blind as he comes to realize you just cannot live someone else’s life.
Made when NICHOLSON could act anyone off the screen with just a look or a movement of an eyebrow: Halcyon days, indeed, before he became the self-parody he is today.
Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (Esthetics) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.
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