Takes off but doesn't soar
By Joyce Koor | Posted: 17 November 2009 1711 hrs

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RATING:

SINGAPORE: “Amelia” takes flight but this biopic fails miserably to capture the legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart’s soaring spirit.

Overall, it seems like director Mira Nair (“The Namesake”, “Vanity Fair”) had run out of fuel halfway to construct the crucial emotional touch about one of the forerunners of women’s liberation who rose to fame by being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932.

A pity that the audience would never get a sense of where this lady drew her source of determination and passion which propelled her to push the conventional boundaries during an era where women were considered second-class citizens.

Still, nailing the particular accents and mannerisms of the 1930s, the titular actress of “Amelia”, Hilary Swank, holds a physical resemblance to Earhart and manages to fill out the flight suit role quite nicely together with her angular features dotted with freckles, topped off with a big toothy grin.

While the two-time Academy Award winner’s performance is captivating despite the disappointing script by Ronald Bass (“Rain Man”) and Anna Hamilton Phelan (“Girl, Interrupted”) which is based on two literary sources; Susan Butler’s “Easy to the Dawn” and Mary S Lovell’s "The Sound of Wings".

Our first encounter with Amelia is when she became the first woman passenger of a transatlantic flight in 1928, which was nothing more than a publicity stunt by publisher George Putnam (Richard Gere) to sell his books.

Her celebrity status skyrocketed after she did mass market endorsements for products including luggage, Lucky Strike cigarettes (despite being a non-smoker) and a line of women’s clothing and sportswear.

At this point in time, while a record was set as ladies of those days never donned leather helmets to take flight, one wonders if she was really an ambitious lady or the product of a highly successful PR campaign.

The milestone to overcome immense sexism to reserve her space in the cockpit threw the spotlight on Amelia. Upon her return to the United States, everyone hailed this confident lady busting into the aviation scene as America’s sweetheart just as Putnam himself falls for her.

Together with heightened media attention, Amelia’s personal life is marked with turbulence. Only after many appeals from Putnam, she reluctantly agrees to marry him as long as she gets to keep her independence to be ‘a vagabond of the air’ by getting Putnam to promise that he would not hold her to any old-fashioned notions of fidelity.

Amelia then gets tangled up in an affair with her long-time friend, also the government’s first aviation chief Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor). But even after all the big-band jazz music and scratchy monochrome newsreel headlines, the potential drama of a love triangle falls flat.

Surprisingly, even Gere’s usual magnetic on-screen presence fails to make any gravitational pull.

I doubt that it was the lack of chemistry between Swank and Gere that had caused the film its weak emotional locus.

However, it was the less-than-dynamic script that barely skims the surface of both characters’ souls that failed to shed light on Amelia’s motivations on cheating on Putnam, or why Putnam still decides to take her back.

Thankfully, the photogenic allure and historical appeal of pre-war flight captured by the director of photography Stuart Dryburgh manages to find moments of stunning aerial beauty of various parts of the world.

Returning to her true love, free-spirited Amelia attempts to circumnavigate the globe with her navigator Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston). Her final flight seems to provide the film’s much-needed suspense and drama but the climax was never sustained because as we all know, she never made it to her final destination.

Until today, the Kansas tomboy turned Boston social worker who then took to the skies is an inspiration for living by her own principles and is regarded as a beacon of hope to a country suffering the Great Depression.

More than ever, through her deeds and words, she encouraged other women to chart their own courses and even getting involved with The Ninety-Nines, an organisation of female pilots advancing the cause of women in aviation.

Unfortunately, the little emotional investment in the characters and the lack of a story beyond the historical facts barely keeps “Amelia” in the air.

Considering the heavyweight stars involved, what should have been a high-flying adventure and a vast, thrilling account of the most female pilot in history was played too safe in a familiar Hollywood biopic manner.