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| Amelia (PG)
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Dir. Mira Nair, US/Canada, 2009, 111 mins
Cast: Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor
Review by Carol Allen
Director Nair is best known for her beautiful and perceptive films about India ( Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding etc), although she did have a crack at a Western story with Vanity Fair . Here she is directing a workmanlike though not very innovative biopic written by Americans Ronald Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan about the pioneer woman aviator Amelia Earhart, who disappeared in 1937 in an attempt to be the first woman to fly around the world. It tells the story well enough though and has a number of pluses.
The structure is a classic one of Amelia on her final flight looking back over the life that has brought her to this point. Swank in the title role has a cute boyish haircut which gives her a reasonable resemblance to the real Earhart, seen in archive footage at the end of the film, though I doubt if the aviator shared Swank's flashing, tombstone teeth smile. The actress does though have a reasonable crack at conveying Amelia's iron determination, independence and courage. The outstanding performance of the film is Gere as George Putnam, her much older husband, who is also her mentor and manager. As an young actor Gere's performances were sometimes marred by a certain self conscious vanity over his matinée idol looks. In middle age he has become an actor of weight and maturity and is genuinely moving in his adoration of his young wife and hurt over her obliquely hinted at affair with the debonair Gene Vidal (McGregor), a character whose main interest comes from the fact that his young son Gore (William Cuddy) will grow up to become the prolific writer and political activist. There's more British thespian support from Christopher Eccleston as Fred Noonan, Amelia's navigator on her final flight, whose undoubted expertise is marred by his alcoholism, and an effective portrayal by Cherry Jones of Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the then president, who appears from this to have been something of an early feminist.
This is a good looking film with some impressive aerial photography and good attention to detail in terms of artifacts, aeroplanes and clothes, the last of which Swank in particular wears as to the thirties manner born. The dialogue is however frequently a bit clunky and obvious - "Don't let anyone tell you no", Amelia says to a another young aspiring female aviator - and the script tends to be a rather dutiful plod through all the important events in Amelia's life. Nair adds some depth to the proceedings with the use of archive footage and references to the depression era background of the story and she handles the climax well, when Amelia's plane loses radio contact with the ground and she disappears. And if you don't happen to know very much about this woman, who made such an important contribution both to the history of aviation and female empowerment, this film will fill you in painlessly on all the necessary facts in a reasonably entertaining way.
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