October Sky Directed by Joe Johnston Starring Jake Gylenhaal, Chris Cooper, Laura Dern Rated PG (some sensuality, violence, and language)
Today, most of the teenage flicks are about high schoolers getting into grotesque, drunken situations involving sex, drugs, booze, and violence. While Welcome to the Dollhouse did it all sensibly, Jawbreaker, Varsity Blues, and the like are all examples of the teen-flick norm today. Out of this junk comes a movie based on a true story and while it isn't exceptional or particularly fresh, it is a great change of pace from the ultimately drab and cynical movies that are coming out of the studios aiming for teenage audiences. The story feels old and used, but it is moving. I admit to not wanting to see this movie- the commercials promised melodrama. While October Sky is melodrama, it is better than most because its intentions are good At the end, the drama is overdone, but its emotion is sufficient. Maybe I'm praising October Sky because I'm sick of what the usual teenage movie has to offer. The movie isn't exactly master filmmaking, it sometimes falls into the Ditch of Melodrama Normalcy, and Laura Dern doesn't do anything I can perceive as strong. I'll know in a few years time when I look back on this film. Right now, I can't deny that I was uplifted and enjoyed the story of Homer Hickam (Jake Gylenhaal), a young man aspiring for the stars.
October Sky centers on Homer, who is surrounded by a small town and narrow-minded townsfolk. With the sight of Sputnik, a Cold War milestone, Homer has become interested in rockets and science. His father (Chris Cooper in a fine performance) is both disappointed and angry that his son is interested in these subjects. Young men in this town stay there, unless they get a football scholarship elsewhere. It has always been tradition for the men to work in the coal mines. Homer looks at the mine as the Place of Evil and Blackness- when his father gets sick in the middle of the film and he must take over his job and go down into the mines, the look on his face shows more than reluctance- he looks up into the sky as if his father and God have betrayed him.
Urged on by his teacher Miss Riley (Laura Dern), Homer convinces his friends Roy Lee, O'Dell, and a science nerd, Quentin to help him make a rocket that would be Science Fair potential. This rocket may be their ticket out of the crumminess of their native town. Homer, a boy who's math grades are waning, is the most determined of the group- he studies trigonometry and all sorts of math subjects to help in his building of the rocket. There is a fire in his eye when he feels his rocket will blast off into space. His hopes for entering the Science Fair are dashed by the discovery that his rocket may have lit a forest fire. The fire in his eyes dies and he succumbs to his parents' wishes- he works in the mines.
I saw this movie in the dollar theater and there was a wretched man screaming at the top of his lungs "jerk" whenever Homer's father had a disagreement with him. The script and Chris Cooper, thank heaven, don't make Homer's dad a stereotype-bad-guy-underestimating-parent, but a man confused by new thoughts, like Topol in Fiddler on the Roof, or Rock Hudson in Giant. He wants the best for his son- but he wants the best on his terms. He believes that people should stick with what is normal, what is common and ordinary and you can't blame him. We can't always understand him when he so cruelly represses Homer's dreams of rocketry. His fights with Homer usually don't go beyond mainstream-movie father-son arguments- it is usually when they're not fighting that the film succeeds. There is an especially stirring scene in which Homer asks his father to come to one of the rocket launches. His father doesn't want to, in any way, support this ambition of his son's, but he doesn't want to let his son down. There is no screaming or shouting, just an uneasiness about the scene.
The later brawls between Homer and his father are what you would expect- an exchange of "You wanna get out of this town so bad, then go!" and "Yeah, I'll go, and I won't even look back!" These scenes have their emotional qualities, but they're primitively done, not that I expected something on the lines of Orson Welles. The movie gets you in such a mood that, when it finally ends: when the father and son finally connect, when the whole town pitches in to help Homer win the fair, you're elated by this young man's strength- the fact that he broke through the barriers set by parents and townspeople and mediocrity, the barriers many people never cross, the barriers I bet Homer's father wished he had crossed. When October Sky is bad, it assaults us (maybe ‘assault' is a bit too strong) with its lack of ambition and its ordinariness, and that is why I don't always admire it.
Homer Hickam now lives in Cape Canaveral training astronauts for NASA. October Sky is not about rocketry, but about facing obstacles and beating the odds against you. I wish more kids had seen it. The only people I saw in the theater were senior citizens. The movie has lots of heart and good intentions and I wish people could see this instead of the uncouth and presumptuous trash that brings the execs the dough nowadays.
By Andrew Chan
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