tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

Starring: Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, Mia Wasikowska, Joe Anderson
Director: Mira Nair
Release Date: October 23, 2009
Running Time: 111 min
MPAA Rating: PG
Distributor: 20th Century Fox

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It was precisely the social issues that are quite prominent in India that director Mira Nair tries to infuse elements of her own Indian tradition into this embalmed Hollywood biopic. What should have been a fairly easy transition for Nair turns into an unfulfilling film that makes a mockery out of one of the most honorable female characters the twentieth century has seen, female pilot Amelia Earhart. With her desires and ambitions to become "important" in a world dominated by men, there seems to be a converging of ideas relative to Nair's previous films which happen to plunge headfirst into human experience and relying on emotions and conflict rather than Hollywood hoopla and foolish sentiment.

Had Nair's talent and conscience remained intact and not dwindle away from the script (Ronald Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan) and studio demanded conventionalism rather than risks and uniqueness, maybe "Amelia" could have resembled "Namesake" or "Monsoon Wedding." Those were two previous features by Nair that implicated the same struggles Earhart (Hilary Swank in a performance that is strenuous over-exaggerated) went through; testing new grounds amidst a culture that isn't used to having traditions banished and challenged.

By wanting to aim at nothing less than the sky beginning in 1929 and lasting throughout 1937, Earhart rapidly set out to conquer gravity and, even a tougher challenge, America's traditional values set authoritatively by men. With these two specific goals "Amelia" should have eluded predictability and drift away slowly to a fascinating subject charting a woman's ability to thrive in a man's world. Instead the film disregards them and doesn't nearly explore them as explicitly as they should thus, it disintegrate rapidly, drowning in a pool of nonchalant mechanisms (melodramatic music and a tinge of golden light that makes the picture look holy) that tend to make up every biopic that surface today.

Having Charles Lindbergh conquer the Atlantic a few years before her, Earhart seemed fascinated in replicating Mr. Lindberg's feat and even surpassing him by attempting a circumnavigation around the world. This fantastically insane voyage eventually led to her demise over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. Her death still remains a mystery to this day.

Audiences will prefer, especially women, the enormous strides Earhart took in a world that kept their constraints on women tightly compressed. Persisting to do more and more she gains the attention of men, especially a business mogul and eventual husband, George Putnam (Richard Gere). He has her endure countless marketing campaigns and speaking engagements to enhance her image and benefit the funding needed for her expeditions around the world.

Gere is, still, considerably watchable as he yet again portrays an egotistic, handsome man who is more moved by money than love. But when the time demands him to show emotion, even his tone doesn't insist romanticism but rather radiates a man who is forced to do so because of a lugubrious script plagued with superficial concepts of romantic sentiments. If Gere's character can be coerced into false emotions, then Ewan McGregor's character Gene Vidal, a smiley, handsome and rich man with a child, is even more ridiculous and undesirable. His feelings for Earhart, and hers for him, are escorted finely along a path like a chain-gang who is never able to unhook their shackles and veer along a path where vitality and freedom reign. To a certain extent "Amelia" seems to represent a derisive approach to Earhart's life by reducing it to a life where an effluence of love prevails over her unprecedented achievements.

Nair's approach to film can be subtle and at times emotionally draining throughout her entire career, but once Hollywood beckons her to make a film she loses all her creative juices. In "Amelia" they succumb even below mediocrity. Everything that Earhart built her respectful foundation upon (courage, desire and will) has apparently gone missing in Nair's attempt to capture Earhart's valor. Surely the film isn't a culmination of the great feats Earhart accomplished, mingled throughout are tiresome and sappy subplots that grow more excessive (black and white news footage) as the film reaches its climax. It would be a most extravagant feat if Nair were capable of keeping her film from submerging to the bottomless pit of a dangerous ocean starving for biopics.

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