In line with the films, The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Others (2001), Passengers (2008) centers
on the (hypothetical) question of whether the walking dead have to be convinced
that they are indeed dead rather than still living. In all of those films, and
even Ghost (1990),
the dead who stick around as ghosts rather than immediately pass on to another realm
have something to come to terms with, or work out. The astute viewer of these
films is apt to wonder whether in the story-worlds of the films, as well as in
real life, all that is going on is really just in the dying brain of the dead
person, which is the case in Jacob’s
Ladder (1990). We know that a dying brain secretes a hallucinatory hormone.
As for whether there is even an actual afterlife, such a question is still beyond
our reach, at least before death. I contend that Passengers hinges on
whether the entire movie takes place in Claire’s mind. The answer hinges on the
nature of the existence of the other characters who are dead. If they have
their own agendas rather than are around to help Claire come to terms with the
fact that she is actually dead—that she was on the plane that crashed with no
survivors—then the film posits the existence of ghosts in our world rather than
just in dying brains. The issue, in short, is existential and metaphysical.
Passengers centers
around Claire and her love interest, Eric. Initially, Claire thinks she is a
therapist called in to do group counseling with the few survivors of the crash.
The mystery of whether the airline is spying on the survivors and Claire to
make sure than none of them reports that an engine had exploded, rather than that
the crash was conveniently due to just pilot error, is actually a red herring
or diversion designed to keep the film’s viewers from figuring out that Claire
is really dead before she realizes it in the film. The strategy is ingenious.
Arkin seems to be an executive
at the airline, but he is really the dead pilot of the plane. His agenda—what he
is being held back from heaven or hell for—is to come to terms with the fact
that he had not even been in the cockpit when the engine initially caught on
fire; perhaps he could have put out the fire before the explosion. Talking with
Claire, he keeps insisting that there was no explosion; it was just due to
pilot error. We don’t suspect that the error was actually his own. His coming
to terms with this does not fit with the reason why Claire is being “held back,”
so his existence as a ghost cannot be just in her brain’s working out of her
own death.
Similarly, Shannon, one of the
crash survivors who is in Claire’s therapy group, does not help Claire. Rather,
Shannon is obviously disturbed apart from anything going on with Claire, and it
is only when the ghosts of her relatives come to her aid that she no longer
attends the group; she has moved on. This is yet another “data point” supporting
the theory that in the film’s story-world, ghosts do exist rather than merely
being figments in dying brains.
Not every dead character adds
support for the contention that ghosts do exist in the story-world, however. Toni,
the excessively helpful older woman who lives in the same apartment building as
Claire does, and Perry, who ostensibly is Claire’s boss, do not have their own
agendas and thus can exist only in Claire’s brain, or as ghosts, as they are
there to help her rather than come to terms with their own dilemmas. Toni is
actually Claire’s aunt and Perry is one of her elementary-school teachers who
have come back as ghosts (presumably from heaven) to help Claire realize that
she is dead.
Eric is an interesting case;
he has his own issues, but he knows he is dead and he patiently waits for
Claire to come to the same realization about herself. His brazen recklessness
in front of a car and then on the tracks in front of a train may be geared to
helping Claire realize that he, and thus herself, are actually dead. “You had
to realize it on your own,” he tells her as soon as she realizes that she had
been a passenger too, and thus is dead. She is at peace as she goes sailing
with him, and, as in Ghost, the screen turns to white, suggesting perhaps
that her existence in the world has ceased or that her brain is finally completely
dead. Whereas in Jacob’s Ladder, the soldier has been dead on a slab all
along, the independent agendas of Arkin and Shannon are strong evidence that
the dead do not exist in the film only in Claire’s mind.
Unlike “mind in a vat” solipsism,
which is evinced in The
Matrix (1999) albeit not involving dead people, the ontology of ghosts
in the world, or in another world with some vague, tenuous ties to the world of
the living is a metaphysical point that we continue to exist after the death of
our respective bodies. The materialist death of the human brain is distinct
from positing the reality (i.e. ontology) of ghosts, and the astute viewer of Passengers
may pick up on this subterranean question after having watched the film. That
the medium of film can trigger such a fundamental question is my underlying
point as to the potential of film to “do” philosophy, and with a greater reach
than any book on philosophy can have in a non-studious culture.
