Amelia
starring Hilary Swank, Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor
written by Ronald Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan
directed by Mira Nai
Rating: ♦♦♦◊◊
This is the story of Amelia Earhart (1897-1937), pioneering American female pilot. Earhart’s story is well known. She was a trailblazing woman decades before her time. She set many early aviation records, especially records for a woman: non-stop crossing of the continental United States; non-stop crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by a woman (twice); work with the 1930s Roosevelt administration to establish commercial air travel in the U.S.; and, finally, her mysterious disappearance over the Pacific Ocean during a multi-stage round-the-world flight. Her re-fueling target was small and remote HowardIsland but for reasons unknown - she was off course, she ran out of fuel, she ditched and drowned in the ocean, she was cast away and later died on another remote island, she was captured and tortured by wartime Japanese, etc. - she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were never seen again after their final departure from Papua New Guinea in July 1937.
With her agent husband, George Putnam, Earhart pioneered the practice of product endorsement as a means of financing her flying. I was surprised about that because I knew about her as a ground-breaking female flier, but I never knew about the business side of keeping her in the air. Ameliaconcentrates on portraying their marriage in the midst of their publicity business. I mean it gives us less information about the woman as a pilot than it does about her as a celebrity and object of both male and female attraction.
I am regularly unimpressed by the acting talents of both Hilary Swank andRichard Gere. Why are either of these two in the movies?