Big-screen 'Amelia' isn't as compelling as the real Earhart

MOVIE REVIEW

There's a tiny moment in Mira Nair's "Amelia" that has the unfortunate effect of making everything else in the movie seem overblown and sentimental: It's a brief, undated film clip of the real Amelia Earhart, jumping out of a cockpit (really, she's practically springing) and beaming with unselfconscious joy. Something about the looseness of her movements and the simple happiness on her face makes the moment both irresistible and poignant; she would, before too long, vanish forever.

And I'd rather remember her from that clip than from Hilary Swank's performance in this film, accomplished as it is. "Amelia" is a conventional, competent and often very pretty film; it's just never as interesting as the woman at its center.

Screenwriters Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan, working from two Earhart biographies, structure their film in flashbacks, starting with the flight that first made Earhart famous: when she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic (though as a passenger) in 1928. It continues through her marriage to publisher George Putnam (a jaunty Richard Gere), her love affair with pilot Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor), her first solo Atlantic flight in 1932, and her doomed final flight around the world in 1937. Little attention is paid to her early years, or to how she fell in love with flying.

Gere and McGregor both convey great charm as men who know that they're mere sidekicks for someone whose focus is elsewhere. (Earhart gave Putnam a letter on their wedding day detailing her reluctance to be married; he, presumably a man of great resilience and determination, met her at the altar regardless.) Kasia Walicka Maimone's '20s and '30s costumes are detailed and witty, and director of photography Stuart Dryburgh finds a few moments of aerial beauty, particularly one where Earhart tosses her scarf from the cockpit and watches it dance in the clouds.

But Nair, who's made some beautiful character dramas ("The Namesake," "Monsoon Wedding"), can't seem to help Swank find the soul of her character; this Amelia is always a cipher, long before she's disappeared. Part of the problem is the awkward Midwestern accent that at times seems to be hampering Swank's dialogue (since few of us now know what the real Earhart sounded like, why not have her speak in a more relaxed manner?); part is the screenplay's need to race through events to get through an eventful decade in under two hours.

Though Swank has a remarkable physical resemblance to Earhart and here gives a thoughtful and intelligent performance, it lacks the spark that makes biopics come to life.

The real Earhart, whose movie counterpart says here that she wants to be "a vagabond of the air," disappeared somewhere over the Pacific in 1937 — an event depicted with meticulous realism in the film. Her spirit, it would appear, remains elusive.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com