Review

Review Date: 25-October-09
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Junk

Amelia (2009)

Biography is the most impractical of film genres. A person's life never lends itself to a story that can be told satisfactorily in two hours even if it is rich enough to merit telling. To achieve a narrative or artistic arrangement (especially outside a documentary), a filmmaker must focus on a chapter of a life or the historical period in which it was spent, and this can result in a picture that feels glossed over. At best a biography can show enough to inspire curiosity, but there is always the chance that an audience has a set understanding or opinion about the person before seeing the film. And if the person went through harrowing or astonishing experiences, the movie runs the risk of exploitation.

One would think that any filmmaker who braved these waters would at least bring out the interesting points of her subject's character, particularly when that subject appears unorthodox. For over 70 years Amelia Earhart has struck the world's fancy as a woman who did what others of her sex lacked the courage or imagination to do. Yet the new biopic from Mira Nair, along with writers Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan, portrays Earhart as someone of nondescript personality who had questionable talent and even more questionable morals, as much a construct of marketing and media as a pilot, trailblazer, or trendsetter.

Nair does go for the gloss as two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank dons '30s clothing and a Midwestern accent to play the purported icon. Almost nothing of Earhart's background is given and what there is comes too little, too late. The movie begins when she meets George Putnam (Richard Gere), a promoter/publisher who offers her a job as the Vanna White of aviation, the token female who will cross the Atlantic with male pilots (without touching a single control) to generate money through publicity. Earhart's vague look of distress at this offer may be due to a bad oyster eaten the night before, for she accepts. Not only that, before you can say "common shill" she succumbs to Putnam's indiscernible charm and becomes his lover, then his wife. The script mentions her desire to be free and offers the slightest intimation of bisexuality. Neither idea is explored, however, which makes it confusing to process her relationships.

In addition to her marriage, her adulterous liaison with Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor) is barely defined and raises another question about children. Earhart appears to love Vidal's son Gore, so one wonders if she could not have children or did not want to have them as hinderances to her freedom. The expression of this freedom is her love of flying, the sole personal trait that the movie addresses head-on. She is allowed to fly solo after the initial publicity stunt while Putnam milks her fame with every year that passes. This leads up to her famous final flight in which she tries to go around the globe in company with a navigator. Even so dramatic an ending (lost at sea, no wreckage ever found) falls flat after the dull string of people and events that is Amelia. The newsreel clips at the end suggest that there was a thousand times more to the real woman than this movie attempts to show.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.