Free to Stop Lying

In the movie Flight, Denzel Washington plays William “Whip” Whitaker, the captain of the fictional Southern Airlines. On the job he is charming, confident and utterly in control. But we soon learn that this persona is merely a mask hiding a proud, fractured, damaged psyche, and a man who is suffering from alcohol abuse. Intoxicated, but in control (which seems like a contradiction in terms – but, so is Whip’s life), is the shape Captain Whitaker is in one rainy morning, when he pulls his jet up high above the clouds on a routine 56-minute trip from Orlando to Atlanta. When the plane he is flying experiences mechanical failures, Whitaker is forced to crash-land in a South Georgia field, saving 96 of the 102 passengers on board.

At a hearing, to investigate the crash, the lead NTSB investigator, reveals that the cause of the plane's malfunction was a damaged jackscrew in the elevator assembly, and commends Whip on his valor and ability to land the plane under such conditions. Just when it appears that she will be letting Whip escape culpability, she raises suspicion around two empty alcohol containers found in the trash on the plane; which Whip knows were his. The investigator goes on to point out that only the flight crew had access to the alcohol, and only two of the flight crewmembers failed the toxicology testing following the crash (Captain Whitaker and a deceased female stewardess). In an intense scene that follows, Whip, tearfully, admits not only that he was flying intoxicated but also that he is intoxicated at the hearing.

Thirteen months later, an imprisoned Whip, serving a minimum five-year sentence, tells a support group of fellow inmates that he’s glad to be sober and does not regret doing the right thing. "That was it,” he says. “I was finished. I was done. It was as if I had reached my lifelong limit of lies. I could not tell one more lie." Despite incarceration, Whip concludes, "For the first time in my life, I'm free."

But, what is it that Whip feels “free” from? It’s not his alcoholism, for that is merely a byproduct of an inner struggle (i.e. a gnawing emptiness inside that he hides through appearing to have it all together). The freedom he speaks of is his being able to stare intently into the mirror of self-criticism, and to accept his fallen condition. He has to admit what’s really going on in his life to experience freedom from it. Captain Whitaker’s path to healing and transformation comes only when he painfully looks into the face of his wounds, and gives language to them.

Flight insists that we also look unblinkingly into that shadowy void of our darkest recesses. It challenges us to stop hiding the truth of who we really are in a façade of self pageantry, to come clean, to step out into the open, were lies, masks, and other pretenses do not exist. When we finally come to a place where we’re able to do that, we will experience what it really means to truly be free.