Column on Sully

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. Sully’s saving the passengers with his daring landing becomes a beacon of hope for a battered city.

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.