By Lee Pfeiffer
In a movie industry obsessed with producing CGI-packed epics and animated family films, there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm for quality films about real people. Last year saw an outstanding slew of intelligent films like Revolutionary Road, The Reader and The Wrestler, but their primary audiences never extended much beyond the urban art cinema crowd.There's no way around the simple fact that the public would rather see a brainless Transformers movie than any tale that might speak to the human heart or condition. Nonetheless, credit must be given to studios that still take the plunge and finance distribution of intelligent, well-made films.Case in point: Fox Searchlight's Amelia, which celebrates the life of Amelia Earhart. The film provides yet another solid role for Hillary Swank, who continues to impress as one of the most exciting actresses on screen today. The diversity of the roles she takes on is testimony to her talents and an indicant as to why she has already been awarded two Oscars.
Amelia pays scant attention to Earhart's early years, save for a few mentions that she was inspired to fly from the very first time she witnessed an airplane soaring above her family's rural Kansas home. Most of the story centers on Earhart's unlikely emergence as one of the first major advocates of equality for women. The plain Jane tomboy who disdained glamour and glitz focused on proving that women could be every bit the equal of men in the aviation industry. The film depicts her reluctant status as a novelty act, promoted as a female who dared to think she could succeed as a pilot. One of her early flights was an exercise in deception: the promoters ensured that a man accompanied her to do the actual flying. Disgusted by the deceit she had agreed to, Earhart became determined to earn her stripes with a flight across the Atlantic. The resulting triumph saw her emerge as an international hero and role model for women in an era in which their most dramatic challenge was supposed to be relegated to deciding what to make for dinner.Â
The film doesn't shy away from covering Earhart's human frailties. Despite having a loyal husband that she adored, publishing magnate George Putnam (played by the reliable and seemingly ageless Richard Gere), she was drawn into an affair with his best friend, aviator Gene Vidal (played with appropriate charisma by Ewan McGregor). Earhart also succumbed to crass commercialism and was eventually roundly criticized for endorsing virtually every product that came her way. As played by Swank, Earhart was a charismatic, genuinely sincere person whose blind ambition to set records resulted in her taking foolish risks. The film's depiction of her final, fatal attempt to circumvent the globe is as suspenseful as it is chilling. The script implies that two acts of pure carelessness resulted in her demise: a U.S. Navy technician charged with monitoring her flight allowed the tracking device's battery to run out, and Earhart herself refused to take a Morse Code machine in her cockpit that would have allowed searchers to communicate with her.
Appropriately, the film has a female director, Mira Nair who refreshingly avoids the stale techniques employed by most contemporary movie makers. Nair actually uses the old-fashioned device of using spinning newspaper headlines to advance the plot! The CGI is used sparingly and is thus quite effective. Praise should also go to the film's female production designer (how many are there in the industry today?) Stephanie Carroll for using the movie's relatively modest budget in creative ways. Carroll manages to recreate the era of the 20s and 30s quite vividly and its refreshing to see a film that doesn't indulge in political correctness (everyone smokes, as was the case during this era.)
Amelia isn't a great work of art or a film for the ages, nor does it pretend to be. It is, however, an intelligent and well made movie that informs as much as it entertains. Predictably, it's flopping at the box-office - a casualty of the nation's passion for action movies and animated family films. However, it should be flying into a video store near you soon - make sure you put it on your "must watch" list.