OCTOBER SKY
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: In Coalwood, West Virginia, 1957 a
boy uses model rocketry to escape the fate of a
career digging coal. With the inspiration of one
high school teacher and the drive to follow his
curiosity and vision, he resists all the pressures
of the town, and especially his own father, to work
for a dying mining company. While parts of the
story seem contrived, this is a true story. It is
based on a book by the main character is riveting.
Rating: 8 (0 to 10), low +3 (-4 to +4)
It is October 1957 in Coalwood, West Virginia and there are virtually two different worlds--worlds that never touch each other. One world is the town's coal mine. The Olga Mining Company runs that and it is the town. Most boys know from an early age that when they get old enough they will go down in the mine to work. The other world is what they read about in the papers. It is where amazingly the Soviets just put a satellite called Sputnik in orbit around the whole planet. And for nearly the first time the two worlds touch. There right over Coalwood is a light shooting across the sky. Homer Hickam, Jr. (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) sees the satellite go overhead, and nothing will ever be the same for him. There overhead is a piece of the outer world, put there by a rocket. Homer gets some of his buddies together with the school nerd and they decide that they are going to build their own rockets.
This is the story of the four boys who dedicate themselves to building and launching their own rockets. Naming the rockets Auks after flightless birds they soon find that launching rockets not only can be the ticket to get them out of town, it really has to get them out of town. The town is owned by Olga and they are not allowed to fly rockets from Olga's property. Instead they find a slate hilltop eight miles from town and set it up as their launching base. They begin to get the materials and money they need by any means, fair or foul. This includes stealing spikes from abandoned railroad tracks and selling them. But there is tremendous resistance in the town to doing anything as strange as building rockets and they come into conflict with the school, with the police, but most of all Homer Jr. comes in conflict with his father, Homer, Sr., superintendent of the Olga mine. [Note: to avoid confusion, Homer, Sr.'s name is changed to John in the screenplay.]
"John" is played by Chris Cooper in an ironic piece of casting. Cooper is most familiar for his role as the coal mine union organizer in MATEWAN. In this film he is cursing that same union. But the conflict between Homer and his father forms the dramatic core of the film. It is in the love-hate relationship between Homer and his father that the film gets its strongest resonance. Homer's relationship with an inspiring teacher, Miss Riley (Laura Dern), while also strong, falls into more familiar territory.
OCTOBER SKY is directed by Joe Johnston who directed THE ROCKETEER and JUMANJI. The screenplay is by Louis Colick, based on the book ROCKET BOYS by Homer Hickam, Jr. Hickam claims to be pleased with the adaptation of his book and even points out that the two titles are anagrams. For acting credit, the honors go mostly to Chris Cooper as Homer's father. Laura Dern and Jake Gyllenhaal are just a little too good-looking for their roles as films of the original people demonstrate at the end the film. However, Coalwood, filmed in a Tennessee coal town really does capture the look of West Virginia in the 50s. [I say this as someone lived in West Virginia for a while in the 1950s. Okay, I was very young, but I still remember the look of coal country.]
OCTOBER SKY is a powerful look at a young man's drives to become a scientist. It is also a moving portrait of a father-son relationship. I rate the film an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
MINOR SPOILER: There are some odd touches that should have been cleared up in the script with some explanation. Why did the boys never look at the object the police were holding until AFTER they proved it was not theirs? For that matter why did the police never notice that the object they were holding was professionally built and not made by amateurs. Also were both younger and older brother high school seniors in the same year, as they seemed to be? This seems possible, but unlikely.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
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