Agenda Movie Club: Amelia

Amelia

Mira Nair

2009

Funny that I just watched this last night and this morning I wake up to this article about how they might have found some bone fragments that belong to Amelia Earhart. Either that or a turtle. It’s unclear right now.

But Earhart is one of those things you learn about in school, like Harry Houdini or stegosaurus, that’s always interesting for the rest of your life, even when they make a movie about her that’s not really all that good.

And darn it, this isn’t all that good. The dialogue is pretty hokey at a lot of points, and Richard Gere spends the first third of the movie trying to pretend he’s someone other than Richard Gere, which never works out very well. He does calm down and accept who he is, though, and he’s a lot better after that. But a good part of the movie just sort of skips through scenes quickly, like it can’t really be bothered to talk about them or give them any real context. It’s kind of weird. I felt like they had an over-aggressive editor who maybe didn’t quite understand pacing or storytelling. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded a movie that was about a half hour longer (even considering the dialogue) if it had spent a little more time on giving context to some of the things that happened.

Even, like, the very last shot, where it shows a picture of Earhart and says something like, “Amelia Earhart, 1897-1937,” fades out really, really quickly. “Get the picture over with, boys, we’ve got places to be.” I dunno, it just felt off.

That said, it didn’t really matter, because it was still about Amelia Earhart (is this just a Kansas thing? Do kids in other states learn about her, too? And do they think she was cool, too?), so it was, by nature, interesting. And man does it look good. Beautiful colors and generally gorgeous photography, which probably shouldn’t be a surprise considering it was directed by Mira Nair.

Also, Christopher Eccleston is in it, which is never a bad thing, even when he’s pretending to be American and isn’t all that great at an accent.

I don’t care a whole lot about Amelia Earhart’s struggles with fidelity, so the whole subplot with Gore Vidal’s father didn’t do much for me, but I think the most fascinating stuff was about how she became commodified through her celebrity when all she really seemed to want to do was to fly a plane. She endorses everything under the sun, including plenty of things she doesn’t use (Lucky Strikes, when she’s not a smoker), because it’s the only way to finance her flights. She sort of becomes a product, at least in the public eye. Maybe that’s what happens when you marry your publicist.

Hilary Swank is excellent, by the way.