THE PILOT’S WIFE

US, 2002, 90 minutes, Colour.
Christine Lahti, Campbell Scott, John Heard.
Directed by Robert Markowitz.

The Pilot’s Wife is an above-average telemovie. It focuses on a pilot’s wife who receives news of her husband’s death in a plane accident. She has a very happy marriage, grieves for her husband, tries to deal with her daughter who is at a difficult adolescent age.

However, the secrets under the surface reveal a different story, a brittle marriage, an unfaithful husband, his second marriage and family in England, his involvement with a smuggling group of pilots, connections with the IRA.

Christine Lahti is excellent, as always, as the fifty-year-old widow who has to deal with the truth about her life and is bewildered by it at first but eventually seeks to find out the truth and confront the other woman. She is also shocked at the terrorist connections. Campbell Scott plays an investigator and John Heard is seen in flashbacks as the husband.

The film may have seemed somewhat implausible at the time of its writing. However, it was released in 2002, after the plane crashes into the Twin Towers in New York City. This makes the film more plausible and frightening. The theme of a second marriage was handled in an Irish telemovie in a similar kind of way, Relative Strangers with Brenda Fricker (1999).

1.The impact of the film? The title and the focus on the wife? Her response to her husband’s death, the gradual revelation of the truth, her dealing with it emotionally and in action?

2.The range of settings: the opening in Massachusetts, the family home? The transition to London, the London streets, parks? The transition to Ireland, the countryside, the pub, the site of the crash? The background musical score?

3.The plausibility of the plot, the second marriage and the pilot with his two families? The initial impact, shock? The flashbacks and the building up to a realisation of the truth? The IRA and terrorist connections? The Loyalists planting a bomb on a plane? In the aftermath of September 11, 2001?

4.The opening, time, Kathryn, in bed, Robert at the door, the news? The phone calls? Her taking in the reality? Talking with her daughter, her daughter revealing things about her own life, especially about sexual experimentation? Her trying to deal with all of this? The media?

5.The flashbacks, Kathryn’s memories, favourable towards Jack, yet the gradual build-up of the picture of Jack, his alienation from her, his love for his daughter, the clash about the computer and his being on-line? The flashback to memories of the holiday home? The farewell, the bag? The courtship, the happy years of marriage, her explaining that she had a happy marriage, her final realisation that it was a fraud?

6.Jack, pilot, not telling Kathryn about his mother being alive, his deceit about the relationship with Murie, the family? His ability to live the double life? His clashes with his wife? Love for his daughter? The smuggling, the bomb, the explosion in the plane?

7.Robert, investigating for the union, his delicate touch with Kathryn? His being about, supportive, gradually revealing the truth? Following her to England? Explaining that she was being followed? The fact that he had known and had suspicions all along? Her disappointment in him?

8.The FBI, the airline officials, their coming to the home, interrogating Katherine? Their blunt methods? The return and taking the documents from the house?

9.Maddie, her age, her father’s love for her, her response to her father’s death, the memory of her not going to the game with him? Her mother’s reassurance? Her telling her mother about her sexual experiences? Going to stay with her friend? The final reconciliation and talking about knowing the truth about Jack or not?

10.Murie, the phone call, the information, Irish, her being a courier for the IRA, in love with Jack, marrying, the two children? The first confrontation with Kathryn and Kathryn’s shock? The second meeting after following the man in the park? A glimpse of the truth?

11.Her going to Ireland, the journalists in the pub, going to the site of the crash, throwing her ring into the water, “Goodbye Jack”?

12.A sensitive portrait of a woman in a very difficult situation and her having to cope and having to grieve as well as discover the shock of the truth?