"Amelia" Earhart: A Different Kind of "Chick Flick"
I had the opportunity this weekend to catch a movie filled with adventure, romance, suspense and period glamor. As with so many films, the story literally flew out of the pages of our history books and onto the silver screen. Hilary Swank is a revelation as "Amelia" Earhart, the barrier-breaking female aviatrix who captured the world's attention in the 1920s and 1930s before her tragic disappearance over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.
While she passed away before I was born, like many Americans, I grew up with a special affection for Earhart, who was a fellow Kansan who'd made good. From small-town roots, she struck her own unique and independent path--with confidence and without apology--inhabiting an increasingly glamorous world, yet never losing her down-to-earth ability to call too much fuss and bluster a load of "hooey."
Her achievements buoyed a nation that had fallen on hard times. Yet as she soared to megawatt international stardom, she was keenly aware of the struggles of working families in the depths of the Great Depression. Indeed one of the more dazzling (and true) scenes from the film involves Earhart taking then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on an impromptu late-night flight over the nation's capital--two iconic women leaders looking down over the most powerful city in the world.
Earhart handled the more than occasional dig at her gender with unflappable grace and infectious brio. In doing so, she broke barriers and inspired generations well beyond the world of aviation. She did well by her home state, too. A key early booster of commercial air travel, Earhart helped vastly expand an industry that today is one of Kansas' leading job creators.
Fox Searchlight deserves kudos for bringing this important American story to the big screen, particularly at a time when strong female leads in major motion pictures are believed by many to be too few and far between.
Movies are incomparable in bringing history to life and to the masses. And, this one certainly boasts an on-time arrival as women leaders convene in Southern California this week for The Women's Conference. Central to the conversation there, undoubtedly, will be The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything. This groundbreaking document, produced in partnership with the Center for American Progress, explores the "new normal" in our society where women now make up half the work force and, nearly as often as men, are the chief breadwinners in their households.
We may love our "Mad Men" on television. But increasingly our society is moving beyond "the problem that has no name," as Betty Friedan once famously put it. According to The Shriver Report, from the kitchen table to the conference room, men and women increasingly are negotiating together a new balance of work and home. There, too, Earhart was ahead of her time, striking the word "obey" from her wedding vows and noting firmly but with affection that her marriage was a "partnership" of "dual control."
Growing up in Kansas, the Earhart legend was fresh in the minds of the people around me. She faced danger and courage at a time when this was not encouraged in women, and she changed history, women's lives and our society in the process. Throughout her life, Earhart continually exhorted women to "take to the skies." In the decades since her disappearance, they have answered her call in a virtually limitless abundance of ways. Now, through the power of movies, Amelia Earhart's real-life heroism is inspiring a new generation. I hope they remember her as I do--head held high, looking to the horizon.
Melissa Silverstein: Where We Are as Women (In Film)
There must be something in the water because over the last week there have been several substantive pieces and one panel (which I will blog...
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Don't listen to the professional reviews-these people spend way too much time watching explosions, car chases, robots and bland comic book teenage stories. Instead, use your own intellect. After reading-yes, reading-a book about Amelia, I decided to watch the movie and see for myself. I was rewarded for my time, as I did enjoy it and came away with a single thought: she lived her dream and passion, and although it cost her life, she did it her way. The planes, costumes, music and drama of the period are well captured, and her courage is always there beneath the story. It has often been said that "Americans know how to make money and die." They don't know how to live. Amelia did.
"But increasingly our society is moving beyond "the problem that has no name," as Betty Friedan once famously put it."
Uh huh. And HuffPo uses "chick flick" in a headline. Would the equally derogatory terms for Jew or Black or Asian or Hispanic appear in a HuffPo headline? I doubt it.
The problem has a name: sexism.
Glickman says, "Amelia Earhart's real-life heroism is inspiring a new generation." Maybe she'd better try a little harder. How many commercial or military pilots are women? Just a guess, but I doubt that women pilots would be working on their laptops and miss a landing in Minneapolis.
Not much of a guess really. I agree that women are woefully underrepresented in aviation and should be encouraged, but I'd really love to know what makes you think they're LESS likely than a man to make mistakes.
Ya may want to review the story about the plane that crashed in Buffalo last winter.
Try the PBS documentary AMELIA EARHART: THE PRICE OF COURAGE. (Among other things, it points out that her other activities distracted her from honing her pilot skills.)
Is there some way we could make this movie compulsory viewing for young women? Movies make history so much more immediate than books and we feel that if young women saw this movie, it would lead to more female jet pilots. We can't remember the last time a plane public address came on and a woman's voice said, This is the pilot speaking. Movies can change all this by making women realize, "the sky's the limit."
Yours sincerely,
The Playdo Institute
Handel Glassberg, President
PART II
There's certainly much in Earhart's story that could've made a good, engaging film that plumbed the darker side of the woman's psyche, the part of her that knew, on some level, that if she died in bed at the age of ninety-three, no one would remember her, so she'd better do something to make sure she never did have to die in bed as a shriveled, forgotten footnote to history. Had the screenwriters and director understood this, they might've avoided falling into the trap that so many movie biographers do: turning drama into tedious hagiography.
By the way, Dan, would you have flogged the film as vigorously if Amelia Earhart HADN'T been from your home state of Kansas?
As president of the Motion Picture Association of America, former Kansas congressman Dan Glickman is paid lots and lots of money (he's a lobbyist, folks!) to say how wonderful each and every movie that comes out of Hollywood is, irrespective of whether the movie is really any good or not.
That said, "Amelia" is a run-of-the-mill "biopic," that remains earthbound due to its superficiality, paint-by-numbers dramaturgy and the obvious overreliance on its "message" to carry it with audiences. Unfortunately, as legendary studio mogul Sam Goldwyn was wont to observe, If you want to send a message, use Western Union.
There's a wonderful prologue to Franz Werfel's "The Song of Bernadette," about the supposed vision at Lourdes by the French peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, in the mid-19th century: "For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible."
So it is with the march of women's suffrage: For those who approve, no movie about Amelia Earhart is necessary; for those who do not approve, no movie about Earhart is wanted.
END OF PART I
Fanned!
Not a great movie! However, I couldn't stop thinking about the Navigator story line. The movie pretty much destroys his reputation by putting in three items. He allegedly hits on Amelia, the evening before the fateful takeoff, accuses him of being a drunk and indicates his hangover contributes to missing the Island refueling stop. HOW does anyone Know what happened. They DISAPPEARED!
I kept thinking his heirs should look defamation charges.
Yup, they went out of their way to make him the scapegoat. Ironically, the Fred Noonan character was the most interesting and animated in the entire film! He had the best line in the sorry script "Can you fit 180 pounds of a**hole?."
It is likely navigation error was what got them though, the L-10 Electra they were flying had enough fuel to get to Howe and twin engines. Not an easy task the way it was done in those days though. What they wouldn't have given for a GPS. I used to an ultralight with a sectional map taped to my leg!
I don't get what the negativity is all about. It reminds me of people who hate the President when it seems to me that he is the finest president since JFK, and I am old enough to have been here when JFK was President. I like Obama even better than JFK! Yes, they are human beings. And yes this movie is a movie not a documentary; the facts may be blurred for better effect, I don't know. What I do know is this is a perfectly fine movie. I enjoyed every single moment. I thought the acting was absolutely first class. I don't really get what's not to like? All that's left in both cases are my wondering if the hostility is the remnants of the isms, sexism and racism? Otherwise the negativity makes no sense.
Seeing the movie made me contact her museum website.
http://www.ameliaearhartmuseum.org/
If modern technology of the late 20th century enabled us to find the Titanic after so many decades and bring artifacts to the surface, I asked the museum representation if anyone is actively searching for her plane. There are a number of organizations in the process of finding funding for such a mission so we can close this "Cold Case" mystery once and for all.
This movie may not be a great screen biography, but how bad can it be? Who's out of touch, the critics or the film makers? Life and the world was different 75 or so years ago.
If you've seen other big box office bios, you've seen this one already: it's a "greatest hits" album of the person's life, slick lines that the real person wouldn't have said are thrown in for entertainment value, and the subject's love and sex life is given way too much focus.
When I checked Rotten Tomatoes last Friday, this film had a 16% fresh rating. NOT GOOD.
If you want to see Swank rock in a historical role, see Iron Jawed Angels.
Earhart wrote her own book about getting into flying, there's FearlessFroop's suggestion above, and there's hundreds of books about Amelia out there. I think they are a better use of time, if you are so inclined.
this movie is so bad its nearly impossible to list even one positive thing. watch it only if you like meaningless, boring and loose on logic and facts movies. not recommended for anyone except those who like paris hiton, britney spears, olson twins or lindsay lohan's films.
The movie is horrid. Ponderous, cliched, uninspiring and, perhaps, worst of all...boring. There is an excellent article about Earhart in the September 9th issue of the New Yorker. You'll get a much better idea of who Amelia Earhart was from that article than from the movie. It's a shame......Swank needs a new agent.
I have put off seeing this movie, but now I will this week, and thanks for your wholehearted assessment of Amelia, as she was one of my heroes from the past as well.
this is the most poorly reviewed film of the year and typical of the garbage hollywood shovels
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