Jeff Bridges would have been better off missing the plane in Second statePeter Weir's sublime crash landing in unknown lands.
It is always good to remember this, but Australia remains an inexhaustible pool of film talent. As for actors, we lost count a long time ago, let's randomly mention Hugh Jackman, Chris Hemsworth or even Margot Robbie in the list. On the filmmaker side, the ground is just as fertile, with Baz Lurhmann, Alex Proyas and James Wan among others. However, we often forget to mention Peter Weir who, like his compatriot George Miller, has often placed mystical experience at the heart of his work.
With Second statethe director of Picnic at Hanging Rock and of The Last Wave does not deviate from his habit, plowing the dreamlike furrow of his most hallucinatory projects. Despite the presence of Jeff Bridges in the casting, this strange proposition did not take off at the box office (barely 7 million dollars raisedor a third of its initial budget). Nothing surprising, alas, as Second state reinvents the codes of the disaster film in a completely atypical way.
CRASH-TEST
Screams, tears and crumpled metal are the favorite recipe for films haunted by the trauma of destruction. For example, Clint Eastwood will become accustomed to doing this by notably producing Beyonddevoted in part to the 2004 tsunami, and Sullyrecounting the forced ditching of an Airbus on the Hudson River in 2009. Weir adopts the same strategy here, well before his American predecessor, by transposing to the screen the true story of the 1989 plane crash in an Iowa fieldalready told elsewhere in a novel written by Rafael Yglesias.
The great strength ofSecond state is then less concerned with the transcription of the catastrophe, even if it impresses (in fact, we will have to wait The Territory of Wolves to relive such a visceral crash scene on the big screen), as well as to the post-drama reconstruction story. We thus follow one of the survivors, Max Klein (Jeff Bridges at the top of his art), convinced of having been touched by the grace of God and anxious to protect Carla, another survivor of the tragedy, bereaved by the death of her child .
If the chaos and confusion are so tangible throughout the film, it is primarily thanks to the very turbulence of the plot, short-circuited on several occasions by flashbacks of the crashincreasingly longer and more enlightening as Max pieces together the puzzle. The filmmaker understood it perfectly, victims of post-traumatic stress have an unfortunate tendency to psychologically absent themselves from their environment. By dwelling on the tragedy, Max locks himself in a flow of thoughts, of visions, which isolates him from the rest of his peers, starting with his wife, Laura (Isabella Rossellini).
It is therefore not surprising that the desire to reconnect with the materiality of things quickly becomes a necessity, even if it means wanting to reproduce the initial shock. This is of course the case of Max who chooses to cross a highway on foot in the middle of rush hour or to drive into a wall at the wheel of his car (at the same time, no attempt, no gain). And sometimes, Weir deploys his sensory palette in the service of much more delicate momentswhere the wind simply sweeps across the hero's face. After all, we really need a little gentleness in this world of bullies.
EPIPHANY OF AN EARTHMAN IN DISTRESS
While preparing the film, Weir was able to meet six survivors of the real crash. “ One of them told me there was a certain beauty in horror“, he confided in March 2024, as guest of honor at the Festival de la Cinémathèque française. A testimony which prompted the filmmaker to rework the scenario in part, focusing more on the aesthetic grandeur of the catastropheas dramatic as it may be, and in fact at all the associated religious symbolism.
In these conditions, it is difficult not to interpret the halo of light that dazzles Max in the plane as a sign of his delight. In biblical terms, here it is illuminatedand the references to the Holy Scriptures do not stop there, since the hero speaks of forbidden fruit (the apple is replaced here by strawberries) or advances his arms in a cross, on the edge of the void. Yes, it's not all very subtle, but the director treats his subject with such love that we can't blame him.
The staging, for its part, will endeavor to translate the spiritual elevation of the miraculous. Beyond following him on the roof of a building, the camera often overlooks him in such a way as to embody an omniscient gaze. So when Max looks up at her, and proclaims “ I'm not afraid“, we understand well that he is addressing the Almighty. It is this upward trajectory of the character, constantly brought back to his earthly gravity, but always inclined to escape from it, which really interests the filmmaker, deep down.
As such, Max is gradually transforming into an icon. The more the image of the Savior sticks to him, the more the film represents him as such. In this sense, he reminds us of David Dunn in Unbreakablewith the difference that the graphic universe summoned by Weir is not that of comics, but that of religious art. Laura, the hero's wife, will learn much more about her husband's condition through drawings of spirals found in his office or by contemplating a copy of The Ascent of the Blessed to the Empyreanfamous painting by Hieronymus Bosch.
THE WORLD IN REVERSED
And Second state transforms the disaster film into a mystical journey, it assimilates survivor's guilt to a near-death experience. Max and his new protégé, Carla, have the feeling of evolving in a kind of purgatoryand everyone chooses to be satisfied with it or not. When one feels invulnerable, the other experiences deep loneliness. Weir thus multiplies the borders, visible and invisible, to demarcate this allegorical intermediate space between the world of the living and that of the dead.
When the hero cleans a fogged mirror and carefully examines his reflection, we see that he no longer completely recognizes himself. Likewise when Carla approaches a child in his mother's arms without anyone realizing it, we cannot help but doubt, like the character who confesses: ” Maybe I am indeed a ghost“. This disastrous horizon then makes us seriously think of that of Jacob's Ladderanother great wandering film with a much more nightmarish ambition.
It would also be wrong to overlook the unusual performance of Jeff Bridges who, well after Starmanonce again embodies a quasi-extra-terrestrial figure, permanently out of step with his environment. To tell the truth, the actor always kept this strange glint in his eyesthis somewhat lunar intensity which undoubtedly allowed him to land his most striking roles with filmmakers with surrealist inspirations, Terry Gilliam and the Coen brothers are perfect examples.
Weir is one of them, and even if he has relocated to Uncle Sam's country since Witness in 1985, he continued to pursue this “ Dream time“, a myth from the Aboriginal tribes of Australia, linked to the existence of a parallel ancestral dimension populated by spiritual beings. Yes, you just need to look at certain transitions from one shot to another to understand how the director is interested in the folds of the worldand as it stands, we are delighted to be able to continue to decipher his work endlessly with this single reading grid.
The polar opposite of the pyrotechnic disaster film, Second state therefore consider the disaster as a crisis of faith. Beyond the respect shown for the veracity of the facts, Peter Weir's film already anticipates this Hollywood fascination with the apocalyptic story, especially after the transition to the year 2000 (hello Predictions by Alex Proyas or The Leftoversbest series in the world). And despite the crazy competition in this field, it is clear that very few still come close to it.
