Charlie Victor Romeo
All planes have a ‘black box’, which record everything that is being said in the cockpit. If a plane crashes, you can find out what happened. ‘Charlie Victor Romeo’ is based on six real black box recordings from flights in trouble, reconstructed down to the smallest detail in a simple cockpit set and shot in 3D. Each chapter is precisely introduced with date, route, aircraft type, number of passengers and a floor plan of the aircraft. Where 3D is used in fiction to create a surprisingly chaotic realism effect, it here instead intensifies the psychological reaction in the cabin when the alarm suddenly goes off. And it does so in such a compelling way, that the film has since even been used as training material by the U.S. Air Force. ‘Charlie Victor Romeo’ was even originally conceived as a stage play in New York, and its minimalist set and design supports the actors’ performance. The awareness that all situations are reenactments of real events is also only reinforced by the statistical objectivity that all disasters are (also) subject to. A cold-sweating study in ‘damage control’. If you suffer from fear of flying, then this is not the film you should go in and see.
