'The Pilot's Wife': A Turbulent Ride

"The Pilot's Wife," airing tomorrow as the CBS Sunday Night Movie, includes this line of dialogue: "Airplanes and politics don't mix." This is not, however, a reference to the terrorist disasters that occurred on Sept. 11. The film was made before that fateful date and was originally scheduled to air not long after it.

CBS postponed the telecast because the film deals with a plane that explodes in the air, but Islamic terrorists are not involved. And in fact the crash is not the focus of the film but more of a catalyst. When it occurs, the "pilot's wife" of the title is forced to face grim realities about her life, her late husband and their marriage. Very, very grim.

The film, at 9 p.m. on Channel 9, is a kind of romantic political mystery that leads to an epiphany of female liberation. And you don't run into movies like that every day. This one is based on a novel by Anita Shreve (who co-wrote the script) that was featured on Oprah Winfrey's famous, but fading, book club of the airwaves.

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It's a somber but intriguing story, but it doesn't quite have enough reason to exist. The pilot's wife, whose name is Kathryn and who's played by Christine Lahti, goes through an incredible journey of her own, but when she comes out at the other end, she really hasn't gone very far.

The movie is hushed and morose. But the director, Robert Markowitz, does his best to add distinctive and revelatory touches -- sudden flashbacks to the days when the pilot (played with almost no dialogue by John Heard) was alive, and smart, quick cuts to little visual details observed by Kathryn as she tries to make sense of it all.

It starts with a knock on the door in the middle of the night. Knocks on the door in the middle of the night are virtually never good news. Publisher's Clearing House never chooses that particular time to tell you that you've won $10 million, do they? The news for Kathryn, delivered by a member of the pilots' union (a dolorous Campbell Scott), is of course terrible.

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But there is more to the bad news than the loss of Kathryn's husband. As we get pulled into the drama, we learn troubling details about the crash of Vision Airlines Flight 274 off the coast of Ireland. It starts with rumors about the pilot. Kathryn learns the crash was caused by an explosion while the plane was in flight, and that a bomb may have been brought onboard. But by whom?

Her world begins to unravel wildly. It doesn't help when her snippy and fat-faced teenage daughter picks that moment to announce that she recently lost her virginity: "I just had to get it out of the way," she says.

Troubled teenagers are the most boring characters in movie after movie, whether for TV or for the big screen. Maybe it's because the whole notion is a cliche. We all know that adolescence is filled with angst and that most of it passes and much of it is hormonal and foolish. Kathryn gets jolt after jolt. The FBI discovers that her husband's mother is living in a rest home in Minnesota. That one's a jolt because he'd always told Kathryn that his mother died when he was 9 years old. The flight recorder indicates he may have had something strange in his flight bag. This justifiably sets her to wondering how many other things about their life together were not exactly reality-based. "It was a wonderful marriage," she tells the union man. To the family priest she confides, "We were in love a very long time -- longer than most couples, I think," but then they "passed out of being in love to -- loving."

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The dialogue is sparse but deftly written. The accumulating details are darkly disconcerting. Kathryn decides to conduct her own investigation and flies to London, where she meets someone who knew her husband a little too well. Later she visits the site where debris from the plane is being collected.

Unfortunately, one could take the moral of the tale to be that men are liars and not to be trusted -- that would help explain how it made Oprah's list. But Lahti makes even the more didactic elements of the story palatable and believable. We share her pain -- at least to the degree that anyone can really share any fictional character's. The question is whether shared pain is enough to get out of a TV movie, and whether that's just what a viewer is hankering for on a Sunday night in April.

Kathryn (Christine Lahti) learns the truth about her husband (John Heard) when his plane crashes.Kathryn Lyons (Christine Lahti) discovers her husband led a double life in "The Pilot's Wife," based on the novel by Anita Shreve; CBS at 9.

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