Fearless Theme

Amazement and Wonder in Peter Weir’s Fearless

Roger Ebert writes, “Fearless is like a short story that shines a bright light, briefly, into a corner where you usually do not look. It makes you realize how routine life can become: how it is actually possible to be bored despite the fact that a universe has evolved for eons in order to provide us with the five senses by which we perceive it. If we ever really fully perceived the cosmic situation we are in, we would drop unconscious, I imagine, from shock.” What the filmmaker, Peter Wier, is attempting to make a statement about, is that we (1) cannot live our lives in boredom of life in general and its monotony because there are far to many wonderful things that go unnoticed, and (2) that

The earliest of examples to that end occurs when Max drives the car to see his friend in the beginning of the film. ON the way he stops out in the middle of nowhere and sits against his car on the side of the road, rubbing dirt between his fingers. This is a demonstration of Max's intrigue with something as ordinary as dirt on the side of the road, a gratitude and appreciation for the basics of what makes up all of life on earth. In addition, Max finds a new love for strawberries, partially newly discovered excitement in simplicity and partially as a test of his state of

The film demonstrates the type of worrying that goes on in everyday life about nothings. The example of Jeff’s wife and the lawyer squabbling over the insurance money owed them from Jeff’s death in the crash is an instance of such an absolute triviality in the scope of things as far as Max is concerned. In all actuality, most things that are made a big deal of in everyday life, being late for class, an average grade on an assignment as opposed to the highest, whether to buy this shirt or that, are all empty inconsequentialities in the grand workings of the universe. In reconsideration, it can be seen that most of what is worrisome at present, will be entirely and completely forgotten in the future of five, ten, or twenty years. Thus, as the Dalai Lama was once heard saying, “Why worry? If you can change a thing, then do it and you need not worry. But if you cannot change a thing, then worrying is not going to make a