Amelia

Now we're cooking with gas! I made enough progress on my movie watching that I can afford to move beyond damage control mode of seeing current releases just before they are about to leave local theaters for good. On Friday I allowed myself the pleasure of seeing a brand new release on the very first day it was in the theaters---Amelia, at the local Cinemark multiplex.

This really is the way to do it. Seeing a movie on its first day of release makes you feel as if you are right in the cultural swing of things. I didn't think that would be important to me, but somehow it heightens the experience of movie going to see it when everyone else is talking about it---it's the blog chatter, you know. Although I can't imagine being a premiere junkie, scrambling to see a movie before everyone else gets to it, I can somewhat understand why some people do that. For me, for the time being at least, I'm content to be in the Gaussian swell of the masses when a movie goes nationwide.

But, oh, there is a price for this. Lately I'd gotten used to being the only person in the auditorium, but on the first afternoon of the release of a big drama like Amelia, you are simply not going to be alone. You're going to have some company, and though I like other people, this is not always a good thing.

In this case, the pitched stadium seating of the Cinemark was quite full. That being said, I was one of the youngest people in the auditorium. I had to switch entrance aisles to get into the theater because the first one I tried was blocked by a very slow moving elderly person on a walker. She wasn't the only one there with such equipment. I could make a crack about how everyone there probably met Amelia Earhart in person, but this kind of demographic is pretty typical for a first-day matinee release of a drama. I think the nursing homes load up minvans for such events.

Amelia was one of the movies that came up over dinner at the Char-Co-Broiler on Monday when Agnes, Thor, and I were sorting out the possible early contenders for the Oscars this year. I was eager to see if it could be placed in the category of an exceptional film. After seeing it, I can with absolutely 100% certainty that Hillary Swank will receive a Best Actress nomination for this, and I wouldn't be surprised if she wins, depending on the other performances. She's extremely good in this role, and I believed that she was Amelia Earhart from start to finish. It was seamless and perfect in this regard.

As for the movie itself, it felt a bit too light and airy, if you will, to be a solid Best Picture contender. But it was a still well-made movie that I enjoyed watching, one without any fatal flaws or things that made me outright dislike it. Perhaps I've just been disappointed so often lately, especially over the summer, that anything that doesn't completely offend me will actually impress me.

The narrative framework is fairly standard. We start in May 1937 as Earhart is about to take off on her last and ultimately fatal round-the-world flight. Then we jump back in time ten years to when she starting out as a professional flier, on her first Cross-Atlantic trip. The story mostly follows from the earlier storyline, occasionally flashing forward to stops on the 1937 flight until the story "catches up" to the main framing plot, where we follow the last legs of her fatal trip. That's pretty much how I would have done it, if I had been charged with writing the screenplay for a Hollywood film of Earhart's life.

One of the beefs I have with late-vintage period films set in the 1930s is that "every woman is Katherine Hepburn." I think it's difficult for contemporary film makers and actresses to capture the essence of femaleness as it existed back then without interjecting the judgement of how things, in their view, should have been. We understand a Kate Hepburn now much more than, say, a Ginger Rogers, who was the most popular actress of that decade whereas Hepburn struggled for audiences.

Given the fact that Hepburn herself played spunky Earhart-type characters back then (see Christopher Strong (1933) for the best example), I was curious to see how this new release would play out on screen in light of the trends I've mentioned. To my surprise, it seemed that Swank somehow actually underplayed the Hepburn-ness of her character, giving her a vulnerable femininity throughout the story that other actresses would have been unable to convey with believability. This will probably be a disappointment to some people when they see movie, given they will expect the "Full-Hepburn."

But the biggest and nicest surprise of this story was on the thematic level. Given the subject matter, I was expecting the theme to be about the sexism that Earhart faced in trying to be a "girl aviator" in a man's world. If this movie had been made in the 1980's or 1990's, I have no doubt this indeed would have been the focus of the film. But instead the theme was far more subtle and interesting, and much more believable for me as fan of 1930's movies.

Specifically, one of the things that has emerged to me so strongly, after watching so many movies from that earlier era, is that our view of "gender roles" from that time is somewhat inaccurate. The idea that "a woman can do anything a man can do" was not as foreign to people in the 1930's as we might think, and perhaps not as foreign as it would become two decades later. There were many strong female characters in that era who did "men's" jobs. Rita Hayworth as a research chemist springs to mind, and well as Glenda Farrell as the perennial spunky "girl reporter" in the hard-bitten city news world.

To bo sure, such characters were often shown as exceptions to the rule, but the point is that they were indeed on screen. The aspect of1930's gender roles that would actually feel entirely alien to today's audiences, however, is the iron clad rule from that time about marraige. Specifically the rule was that a woman can do anything a man can do in the professional world until she is married. Once a woman marries, she is absolutely expected to withdraw from the professional world and devote herself entirely to her husband and to her children---no exceptions. To do anything else was considered to be downright un-female.

Amelia suprised me by showing historical consciousness of this maxim, and focusing more on it instead of the overt sexism she must have encountered. The conflict of the movie is not whether Earhart can be a pilot in a man's world (although there is some of that, to be sure), but about whether or not she can be a wife amidst it all.

I love it when movies nail historical consciousness correctly like that. I can forgive a lot about a movie if it gets something like that right.

If there's a criticism to make of the narrative, it is probably that the writer and director were unable to use these main thematic elements in a way that explained and informed the inevitable climax of the movie. They were constrained, to be sure, by the actual facts of Earhart's final end (or at least the facts that are known). But a superior film would have found a way to use the main thematic elements to set up her death as a tragic downfall based on aspects of her character that emerged throughout the movie.

This is what the movie didn't do, I thought. She crashes (we think), but what is her tragic flaw that created this? I guess you could say it was her ambition to keep flying, but this is rather weak, given all the other things going on in the movie. Earhart is not portrayed as a reckless risk-tasker, but someone who calculates things out, to find a way to make the impossible happen.

The movie thus felt interesting and informative, but not overly powerful in explaining Earhart or the era in which she lived. A Best Picture nominee, perhaps, but if this wins Best Picture, it surely means it was a very weak year indeed.

But like I said---Swank was awesome. You won't be disappointed with her at all, no matter what you think of the film itself.

Update: here's a review from someone who didn't like the movie very much. I agree with many of these criticisms. Like I said, I think I've developed low expectations. I especially agree with one point in the linked review, namely that the movie completely leaves unaddressed any mysteries surrounding her disappearance, basically treating it as fact that she simply ran out of fuel and crashed.

Update: Forgot to mention that this is actually the second Earhart movie this year. The first one, Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian was of course a barely watchable farce, but I thought Amy Adams was perhaps even a better Earhart than Swank. But you know how I feel about Adams.