In the last couple of weeks I’ve seen two very different movies that I’d highly recommend to anyone who enjoys the topics we cover at The Speculist: The Astronaut Farmer, and The Prestige.
The Astronaut Farmer (which just opened in theaters) is the family film of these two. This is the sort of dream-affirming film that is perfect for whole family, but is often panned by the critics. Liam Lacey of Globe and Mail had this to say:
You keep waiting for the other shoe to drop: When will the irony start? The twist is there isn’t one. The Astronaut Farmer starts out looking like a parody of wholesome inspirational fare and then gets ever-more sincere…
The lack of irony is a twist? Er…Liam…dude, who says that movies that promise to be inspirational and wholesome and sincere have to be ironic? Why can’t they just be inspirational, wholesome, and sincere?
He should be thankful. His smug crowd would run out of things to parody without stories like this. It’s a very old-fashioned movie – Mr. Smith Goes To Space, or maybe Rocky with a Rocket.
[MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD]
If it’s Rocky, its actually Rocky 1 and 2 rolled together. Perhaps the critics would have liked it more if the movie had ended before the last reel. But I enjoyed watching the understated way that the final triumph was portrayed. The family picks him up in their old rambler and drive into town for pizza.
There’s much that’s stretches credibility here. Serious X-prize contenders spent much more than the $10,000,000 prize developing their suborbital vehicles. In the movie Farmer had about $600,000 invested in an orbital space program. Also, the X-prize contenders were all large teams. Farmer was just one guy who got some assistance from a Mexican farm hand, his 15-year-old son, and an invalid father-in-law. In reality, that’s just not enough.
Also, the movie makes a paranoid swipe at the FBI. About halfway into the movie Farmer is told by an FBI agent that if he tries to launch his rocket, he will be shot down. When his lawyer suggests that that agent is bluffing, Farmer replies that “Well, I think they’ve gotten pretty good at assassinating people with dreams.”
Yeah. Because the F.B.I. assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. Right.
The Astronaut Farmer did much better when it’s criticism was aimed at NASA. In a piece of perfect casting Bruce Willis was made the personification of the agency. He was portrayed as an aging hero protecting past glories from an upstart civilian. But he was also a friend of Farmers who ultimately celebrated his victory.
[END MINOR SPOILERS]
The message, I think, is that NASA itself is an old hero that can find a way to live with and accommodate the upstarts to come. Space is big enough for government agencies and eccentric tinkerers.
I’ll save my spoiler-filled review of The Prestige for an later update.