We went to see the tom hanks vehicle, Sully, not long ago.
Tom Hanks is this generation’s Jimmy Stewart, an actor with whom an audience
identifies and can count on for a steady performance. Heroes do not have to be
perfect, saintly individuals. At the same time, when we call everyone a hero,
we lose a sense of aspiring to their actions.
Clint Eastwood is the director, one of the oldest active
directors ever. He was faced with a difficult problem. How do you make an
engaging film when everyone knows how its crucial event turned out? Where is
the suspense? Eastwood did three things. First he starts with the heroic
actions of the pilots, and then replays it as the film progresses. He mixes
time as he goes back into sully’s boyhood and military service and to the
investigations as well. Second, his focus is on the aftermath of the miracle on
the Hudson . Also, he makes Manhattan itself a character in the movie. We
see so much of the city, without the Twin
Towers
We have moved away from movies about work day heroes, so I
was ready to see this movie with alacrity. Some of the criticism of the movie
this on this very point. Somehow watching a movie about a person of admirable
skill in a crisis is apparently passé. To try to save the passengers, Sully
relied on 40 years of experience, including training and flying the particular
aircraft. Competence is a virtue
acquired in childhood that grows as we grow, reflect, and continue to learn. He
exhibited preternatural calm as it was very possible the plane would have
slammed into buildings or fail to make a runway. Like the captain of a ship, he
was the last one off the plane, as he checked for injured passengers. Courage is
demonstrated on a battlefield; courage is demonstrated in crisis faced when
people are going about their jobs. Sully responds to a trauma. He can’t sleep;
he needs to process the whirl all around him. The trauma is intensified as the
safety commission seems determined to try to fix blame on his decision to land
on the Hudson River instead of trying to make
local airports. Sully wants to be a safety investigator, but the movie shows us
how different it is to be investigated instead of being h the investigator. The
same technology that sully used to fly and save the plane is the same force
that threatens to undo him in computer simulations.
Older movies sometimes made cardboard heroes, but they often
portrayed heroes on any scale as beset with the problems, doubts, and
limitations we all share. Hollywood
has also been a cultural force in calling out corporate malfeasance in ways our
political discourse has failed to do. Again, ordinary people become the heroes
in these movies with economic villains. The Big Short was a primer on how the
speculations of banks and Wall Street brought the economy to its knees. Now
Deepwater Horizon shows the events that brought the disaster on an oil rig in
the Gulf of Mexico not l that long ago in a
compelling way. In its different way, it is a testament to the heroes of the
events who use their experience and courage in doing their job with competence
in a crisis.
I recall a Star Trek where Captain Kirk was under
investigation. His attorney was old school, someone who used print instead of
the computer screen. He spoke of humanity fading in the shadow of the machine.
Using advances in computer graphics, Eastwood is able to place Tom Hanks in a
realm where common human virtues shine clearly.
