On January 25, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia Airport in New York. Two minutes later, the plane suffered a bird strike, which damaged the twin engines and lost all power.
Captain Sally, who has 42 years of experience, decided to make an emergency landing on the Hudson River when he judged that the flight altitude would not be able to return to the airport smoothly. With his exquisite control of the plane and absolute calmness, Sally finally stopped the plane smoothly on the river, and all 155 people survived.
This was the first air crash in history to successfully land on the river, known as the " Miracle on the Hudson ".
In 2016, the incident was adapted into a movie and put on the screen, allowing the public to understand the story and the story behind the incident.
Directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Tom Hanks and Aaron Eckhart, "Captain Sully" truly restores the 208-second control from the plane being hit by a bird to the successful forced landing. Everything that happens in the room and the cabin. Hanks' expressive acting skills portrayed Captain Sully, who was calm in danger, with superb flying skills and strong psychological ability, in the hearts of the public.
208 seconds can make an ordinary person a hero. But only talking about these 208 seconds will make the hero a little hollow in people's hearts, and it will not be able to support the length of a movie
Therefore, Eastwood does not take the whole process of the plane accident as the main line, but divides it into three parts and interspersed in the film, with a total duration of no more than 30 minutes.
The whole movie revolves around the internal investigation of Sally and his co-pilot Skyes after the successful landing of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) (NTSB is an independent agency of the US federal government, specializing in domestic aviation, highways, railways, waterways, etc. accident investigation).
Regarding Captain Sally's choice to ditch the plane on the Hudson River, the committee's investigators believe this is a poor choice, and they believe that the plane can return to the airport smoothly, and it is safer to fly back to the airport than to ditch the river. , the loss is smaller.
Successfully saved 155 lives, not praised and respected, but investigated and questioned
Moreover, in order to achieve clear contradictions and conflicts, the director stripped the investigators of their perceptual side, shaped them into a machine that only spoke with data, and preconceived that Captain Sally's emergency landing on the river was a demented behavior.
The film pits the Commission against Sally, in order to stir the audience's emotions through this anti-heroism, and to justify Captain Sally's forced landing on the Hudson River in reverse.
The movie opens with a nightmare for Sally: he tries to drive the plane back to the airport, and it crashes because he doesn't fly high enough.
Such a fragment appears twice. This is Sally's calculus for the outcome of the flight: If he had returned to the airport, the result would have been that the plane had crashed because it was not flying high enough.
Through these two fantastical shots, the film suggests that Sally's actions are correct, thus putting the audience on Sally's side. This also shows that Sally believes that returning to the airport will only end in tragedy and no miracle will happen.
When the psychological hints given to the audience by the film do not match the actual situation, the audience will have a psychological gap and achieve the effect of creating contradictions.
Sally's faith began to shake when investigators told Sally that computer simulations had proved the plane could return to the airport safely and that the left-hand engine had thrust.
From the confrontation between Sally and the investigators, we can find that he is a proud person, or that he is very confident in his flying skills and experience.
During the forced landing, there was a set of shots where the first officer asked whether flaps 2 should be lowered again. The captain denied it and asked him what other comments he had. Here we can see from his expression that he has made all preparations and does not need to do anything else.
Many details in the film show Sally's proud and confident image. And this confidence comes from his 42 years of flying experience.
The timeline in the movie is not moving forward, but intertwined and confused.
Among them, there are two fragments of Sally's memories.
The first flashback is that Sally had just started flying a plane. Over the farmer's fields, he flies his biplane with ease, showing his talent for flying. After that, he got permission from the farmer to fly the plane at any time. The farmer said to Sally, "No matter what happens, try to control the plane." Since then, this phrase has been used throughout Sally's entire flying career.
The second flashback concerns an accident Sally had while serving in the Air Force. During the flight, Sally's fighter encountered a malfunction and needed to fly back to the runway. Under the control of Sally, the fighter finally landed smoothly on the runway.
Whether imagining how the plane crashed when returning home, or showing Sally's flight experience, the film wants to tell us a message: a forced landing on a river is not a reckless move, it is the most appropriate choice under the circumstances.
Sally knew how to do it right.
As the storyline progresses, there is a very important character to Sally - his wife Lori.
In the movie, they didn't have face-to-face communication, they all communicated by phone.
Sally was in love with his wife, and even shouted Lori's name when he fantasized about the crash. Lori is arguably the character who supports his beliefs.
But Lori did not show much concern for her husband after the accident, and was even bothered by the harassment of reporters. Lori's almost "indifferent" approach is puzzling.
In fact, among all the characters related to Sally, the person who trusts him most is not the first officer, but his wife.
It is because of her trust in her husband that Lori is not as surprised and worried as others: in her subconscious, her husband will not be surprised.
She didn't care too much about it. Compared to this, Lori cares more about when Sally can fly again, because a property is about to be confiscated and they need money.
When Sally told Lori that he might have made the wrong judgment and might have lost his job because of it, she couldn't believe it.
In the end, Lori realized later that her husband was also in danger at the time, and he was one of 155 survivors. So before the hearing, Lori called her husband and expressed her concern for her for the first time.
The film shows Lori like an irresponsible wife, but her almost "indifferent" attitude and "super long" reflex arc reflect her trust in her husband. Even though she doesn't know anything about aviation, she believes her husband can do anything, even park the plane in the water.
Layers of foreshadowing, constantly giving the audience psychological hints, are all to serve the final climax.
In the first half of the movie, the truth of the story is tied, and how to untangle this knot is what the audience is most looking forward to.
Whether Sally was wrong or the investigators were wrong, although the movie has already told us the answer, the backlog of emotions in the audience needs to be released and justice needs to be done. This is the most important part of this movie.
During the hearing, investigators demonstrated the flight simulation at Sally's request. The results of the simulated flight were as the investigators said, the plane was able to fly back to the airport smoothly.
Here, Sally raises the key question: Flight sims don't take the human factor into account
Want to pursue human negligence, but ignore the most important human factor
During the simulated flight, we can see that the pilots return to the airport without any hesitation after the plane is hit by a bird.
It took the captain more than fifty seconds to decide to return to LaGuardia Airport after the bird strike.
No communication with tower, no flight manual checked, no auxiliary power system activated. The flight crew didn't react like a normal human would do in an emergency, they acted more like a machine.
Want to pursue human negligence, but ignore the most important human factor. While laughing at the mock flight of this hearing, we gain a deeper understanding of Sally's above-average qualities.
He is the most important factor in this accident. Without his calm response to emergencies, without his choice to land the plane on the water, without his perfect control of the plane, success would not have been so smooth
Through the whole film, we see a more real and plump hero.
In addition to wanting to give the audience a more realistic understanding of the event and a tribute to the archetypal characters, the film wants to express more.
The shadow of 9.11 has not been erased from the hearts of Americans over time. This successful forced landing on the Hudson River is like sunshine breaking through the haze and rain falling from the sky to them.
Whether it is the 9/11 incident or the financial crisis that just passed, the American people, especially the people of New York (both incidents took place in New York), urgently need such good news.
While focusing on portraying the image of individual heroism, the film also interprets the importance of the team.
Although the forced landing of the plane was mainly due to Sally's correct judgment of the situation and perfect control of the plane, we cannot ignore the important role played by the first officer. They did it together.
And after the forced landing, the crew and passengers faced the danger of icy river water and freezing temperatures in the minus 20s. Under such conditions, they would freeze to death within minutes.
It was the timely arrival of the rescue team and the nearby cargo ship that all 155 people survived.
This is a miracle accomplished by all participants.
The director's exquisite design of the film and the actor's perfect interpretation of the character have created this good film. It's a pity that I didn't watch this film in theaters, and it lacked the visual shock.
But even so, it is enough for me to reminisce from time to time.
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