Review: AMELIA

AMELIA is the much anticipated film of the pioneering aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. This new, historical biopic from director Mira Nair (THE NAMESAKE, VANITY FAIR), stars two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank as the legendary pilot (she also serves as executive producer), Richard Gere as her husband and agent/publisher, George Putnam, and Ewan McGregor as TWA founder and Earhart’s lover, Gene Vidal (Gore Vidal’s father). From a screenplay by Ronald Bass (Academy Award winner for RAIN MAN) and Anna Hamilton Phelan, based on the books “East to the Dawn” by Susan Butler and “The Sound of Wings by Mary S. Lovell,” AMELIA chronicles the life of Earhart from her early life in Kansas, the first flight across the Atlantic, and Putnam’s attempt to make her a female Lindbergh through product placement. The film also covers her affair with fellow pilot Vidal and the meeting with his son, Gore. Her life  may have been dull, but  her mysterious disappearance on July 2, 1937, while trying to cross the Pacific Ocean on the final leg of her flight around the world, has continued to fascinate the world.

Oscar winner Swank’s resemblance to her real life counterpart is dead-on…even down to her Midwest accent, cropped hair, and thin build. To me, Swank embodied Earhart as how I think of her – a girl with dreams of flying who became one of the first female heroes and strong feminist, if you will. She even tells Putnam that if they were to be married, which eventually they were, she didn’t expect any type of fidelity from either of them. From the story depicted in the film, while Putnam and Vidal supported Earhart’s every independent, groundbreaking decision, she let no one, and certainly no man, guide her brave destiny. Look for Swank to see another Best Actress nomination.

A stirring score from Oscar winner Gabriel Yared (THE ENGLISH PATIENT) sets the mood for Nair’s film, without being distracting. Director of Photography, Stuart Dryburgh (NIM’S ISLAND, THE PAINTED VEIL), provides some breathtaking cinematography of the aerial sequences only meant for the big screen. I can appreciate, from the apparent specific details, the extensive research on the life of Earhart done by Nair. She was admired by many people, including Eleanor Roosevelt. One of the film’s best scenes is when Earhart takes up the First Lady, played by Cherry Jones, for a nighttime flight over Washington, D.C. Both women thought highly of each other and truly felt nothing was impossible.

The final half hour is the most riveting given that the true dialogue and events  are powerful for  their historical accuracy. The only person with Amelia on that final flight was her navigator Fred Noonan, with a subtle performance from Christopher Eccleston and the movie lets us in on the last radio conversations between the ship, Itasca, who was monitoring the flight off of Howland Island and Earhart. Nair’s film is a straightforward account of the life and doomed flight of Earhart. She and the screenwriters didn’t go overboard with a melodramatic script filled with emotional farewells…no bloviated Hollywood ending for this film. Nair’s AMELIA holds its own when measured against recent biopics as ALI, RAY, or THE QUEEN.