Amelia is Lost in the Clouds

Hilary Swank has no peer when it comes to portraying doomed women. It has resulted in her winning two Academy Awards for Best Actress--one for playing the late Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry and one for playing female boxer Maggie Fitzgerald in Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. No actress is better suited to play Amelia Earhart.

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Yet it is clear that more things went wrong during the making of Amelia than with her ill-fated attempt to circumnavigate the globe in 1937. The only difference is there's nothing anyone can do to make this movie disappear. The disaster lies in part with the script co-written by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan. It was adapted from two separate biographies of Earhart--East of the Dawn by Susan Butler and The Sound of Wings by Mary S. Lovell. The script does a disservice to both Earhart and her biographers. The story revolves around a love triangle between Earhart, her husband publishing magnate George Palmer Putnam (Richard Gere) and Eugene Vidal (Ewan McGregor), who was Amelia's one time business partner in Boston-Maine Airways (later to become Northeast Airlines) and eventually appointed by FDR to head up the Bureau of Air Commerce. In case you're wondering, Gene Vidal's son is none other than the late William F. Buckley's old nemesis, novelist Gore Vidal (who is portrayed in the film by child actor William Cuddy.) The problem with centering the story on this love triangle is there is disagreement amongst Earhart's biographers as to whether she and Vidal were ever romantically involved. Based in part on her interviews with Gore Vidal, Butler states, "Gene and Amelia were undoubtedly lovers." However, Lovell is more skeptical. She writes, "There is certainly no evidence to support any suggestion of a romance in the surviving letters between Amelia and Gene Vidal. They are extremely businesslike and convey mere friendship." As for Putnam (or GP as she liked to call him), he is portrayed as a wealthy, middle-aged bachelor who falls head over heels for the younger Amelia and asks her to marry him. In fact, GP was married to one Dorothy Binney and had a son named David. Indeed, Earhart would dedicate her first book to GP's first wife. It is worth noting that Virginia Madsen was cast as Dorothy Binney Putnam but were scenes were cut out of the movie. Did Fox Searchlight Pictures fear including the original Mrs. Putnam would cast Amelia as the other woman and make her less sympathetic? It is also interesting to note that at the time she met GP, Amelia was engaged to Sam Chapman, an engineer from Marblehead, Massachusetts, whom she met in California. She broke off her engagement with Chapman shortly after the Friendship flight across the Atlantic. The onscreen relationship between Amelia and GP also rang false. They behave like teenagers who can barely keep their hands off of each other engaging in constant public displays of affection. Whatever affection Amelia and GP had for each other in private was seldom shown in public and when it was there was a certain air of formality between them. The portrayal of Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston), her navigator on the around the world flight, is perhaps the worst part of the entire movie. Noonan comes across as a cowardly, incompetent drunk who lusts after Amelia. While it is true that Noonan had a serious drinking problem he was a highly regarded navigator and there's even less evidence to support the idea he had romantic feelings for Amelia than there is for Gene Vidal. It is truly a shame a better story couldn't have been developed given the wealth of material available with regard to Amelia Earhart. There is scant mention of her childhood apart from a passing reference to her father's alcoholism and a couple of scenes of her as a little girl in Kansas looking at an airborne plane in wonder. Amelia's father, Edwin Earhart, was a lawyer with the railroad. He possessed a keen intellect he could manage neither liquor nor money. Between 1908 and 1914, the Earhart family moved no fewer than half a dozen times. One of these moves was to Springfield, Missouri where Edwin had landed a job with the railroad. However, upon their arrival there was no job. Amelia, her mother Amy and her younger sister Muriel could endure no more and moved to Chicago to stay with friends while Edwin eventually returned to Kansas. Amelia's curiosity for flying wasn't aroused until early adulthood during a Christmas visit to Toronto in 1917 where her sister was attending teacher's college. Having witnessed so many WWI veterans walking the streets without limbs she felt compelled to forego completing her schooling at Ogontz in order to work as a nurse's aide at the Spadina Military Hospital. Amelia would become friendly with these Canadian war veterans. In return for her kindness they brought her to the local airfield and the skies would never be the same. All of this would have been fertile ground to fly over but instead the film gets lost in the clouds.

Amelia isn't entirely devoid of merit. The cinematography is breathtaking. Swank has Earhart's voice and mannerisms down pat. The highlight of the film is the final scene where Earhart is trying in vain to communicate with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca when she cannot locate Howland Island. She is doomed, knows it but can't do a thing about it. Yet much could have been done to save Amelia. Sad to say but a good deal of the blame for this movie rests with Swank. Not in her capacity as an actress but in her role as one of the film's producers. If Swank exercised the same diligence in charting a flight plan to take the viewer through the story that she did in crafting a good character we might have had a film that would have done Amelia Earhart's legacy proud. Aaron Goldstein was a card carrying member of the socialist New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP). Since 09/11, Aaron has reconsidered his ideological inclinations and has become a Republican. Aaron lives and works in Boston.

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