If Philip Kaufman's 1983 film is less cynical in its examination of Project Mercury's role in galvanizing the Space Race, it is at least appropriately unsure of who, exactly, benefits from such nationalistic chest-thumping. After receiving an earlier draft of the film by screenwriter William Goldman, who was inspired to script the film as a heartwarming palliative to the ugly Iran hostage crisis, Kaufman reportedly sought to de-emphasize the film's focus on "patriotism." What that means is unclear, but we can read a certain amount of intention into Kaufman's insistence on re-inserting Chuck Yeager into the film. Yeager was the first man to break the sound barrier, and his standing as a local hero (note his Western-reminiscent scene on horseback) is what inspired the Mercury pilots to become the world's first astronauts. Tellingly, though, the film closes just as it began, with Yeager on the periphery of Project Mercury, an inspiration only to those in the know. For the Mercury astronauts, Yeager and his friendly rival Scott Crossfield were the heroes of olden times who modeled for them what pioneers of space might look like. For the rest of America, heroism looked like the brave young men on front pages of Life magazine.
So Kaufman too is asking us how we choose our heroes, and who does the deciding. It's probably no coincidence that Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson make appearances in THE RIGHT STUFF, much like FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS featured Harry S. Truman giving his blessing to the central three soldiers. After all, who better than a sitting President to legitimize a national agenda in the hearts and minds of its citizens? Where World War II earned financing through our earnest belief in its moral righteousness, politicians and scientists alike slowly realized the Space Race would also not be won without the publicity that secures its funding. And so Project Mercury becomes the figurehead of a modern manifest destiny, the scrappy underdog nipping at the heels of the Communist menace. A TV show even refers to the astronauts at one point as "our Davids," in battle against the unspoken Goliath overseas. There's been a lot of talk recently about why our space programs have fallen to wayside in recent decades, and the short answer is simply that space travel will never be so mythologically important to the American character as it was in the 50s and 60s. The courageous pioneers, worshiped by media and public alike, encapsulated everything the United States wanted its men to be.
A comparison to Tony Scott's TOP GUN is pertinent here as well. Released a mere three years later, we see echoes of a film William Goldman would have recognized, in which a cocky young American pilot justifies his overconfidence with awe-inspiring aerial prowess. A sentimental, neon-drenched fantasy (not a bad thing, mind you; big Tony Scott fan here), TOP GUN was far less ambivalent about ideological and cinematic wish-fulfillment. Audiences certainly rewarded its brazen endorsement of machismo. THE RIGHT STUFF's box office earnings: $21,192,102; TOP GUN: $356,830,601. You can guess which film has engendered whisperings of a sequel.
Still, at risk again of easy binaries, it would be wrong to say that Kaufman's film doesn't have its fair share of testosterone. Importantly, it is the approach which differs. Perhaps the best way I can describe THE RIGHT STUFF's approach to masculinity is that its men are always given freedom to pontificate and test their strength, but without the consequence-free vacuum most white male American films construct around their characters. Witness the spellbinding moment when the Grissoms realize the military will not honor Gus' finish-line fumble the way it has honored his forebears' resounding successes. Veronica Cartwright gives you the full force of Betty's repressed loneliness finally bursting the dam, and Fred Ward as Gus can do little more than murmur and cry. He's staked his self-esteem on being the homecoming hero, and instead he finds himself having to answer for a long list of failures all at once. He tries to escape, either to a potential mistress or his band of merry gentlemen, but Betty Grissom isn't having it. He will stay, and he will own up to the pain his absence has caused his wife, the disappointment for which the Air Force never prepared them.
Or look at Gordon Cooper, played amiably by Dennis Quaid in one of his best roles (and one which Tom Cruise must have studied closely). Coasting lackadaisically above the earthbound troubles around him, he nevertheless finds himself humbled, even emasculated, by the women around him. First his wife Trudy leaves in a fit of anguish, unable to handle the overwhelming fear of being widowed. Cooper watches with a burning weenie (!) in his hand, grin blown out like a dead lightbulb. In her absence, he invites a nurse charged with collecting his sperm to "join him." He considers his proposition a good-natured bit of flirtation; in 2015, it looks a lot more like sexual harassment. This incident does not go unpunished in the film, however. Cooper is ignominiously banished to a latrine to masturbate alongside fellow astronaut John Glenn (Ed Harris), who cheerfully hums his way through the procedure. Afterward, Cooper re-attempts his seduction, only to be rebuffed by the nurse demanding to see his wife. Cooper tenses up, suddenly aware of the consequences he'd been ignoring. A day later, he watches from afar as the Trudy and the nurse laugh about him in her office. He is equal parts terrified and humiliated, hilariously incapable of maintaining an air of indifference as he waits for the hammer to fall. Instead, Trudy cheerfully rejoins him, reporting that they were only joking lightly at his expense. Relieved and reinflated once more, he sneers "Yeah, she's just one of those women who has a problem with men." Machismo has rarely fallen flatter on its face.
Kaufman knows his male characters are borderline deluded in their single-minded pursuit. At a picnic early in the film, one wife exclaims to the others "Look at them! It's like they're talking about sports!" The men are outside horsing around, while the wives sit indoors speaking of nightmares and all-encompassing dread. Kaufman is canny enough to position the men at a remove from the everyday lives of American families, because the rarefied air the Mercury pilots figuratively and literally occupy is off-limits to all but a few. It does indeed take superhuman bravery to risk death on a regular basis, and that drives these men to take comfort in old-fashioned masculinity. Decades earlier, ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS was just as perceptive in its bittersweet admiration of the pilot life. This isn't an easy job, and the men have to stick together to make it through. Kaufman grants them the outsized confidence needed to survive, but never at the expense of the socially marginal people who fill out rest of their world. Alan Shephard (Scott Glen), the first American in space, enjoys watching and mimicking a racist TV comedy routine in his spare time, but when he finds himself on the verge of incontinence after a test, his position of power over the Latino nurse vanishes. Quite literally too, as he shuffles feebly along to the bathroom with the tall man's hand firmly on his shoulder. Consider, also, John Glenn's defense of his wife Annie (an impressive Mary Jo Deschanel) when Vice President Lyndon Johnson himself is demanding entrance into their home. Glenn defies both NASA and the United States government to protect her from being harassed over her speech impediment, and when he faces repercussions for his act of solidarity, the other astronauts back him up by refusing their services to NASA if Glenn is punished.
By establishing his perspective as a ground-level skeptic, both of national myth and masculine braggadocio, Kaufman allows his film to celebrate this exciting era in American history without glossing over its ugly moments. He sees history in context, and his humility in the face of THE RIGHT STUFF's inherent grandiosity prevents unseemly overreaching. Instead, it's the smaller moments that register. I was stunned by those technicolor tears painted onto John Glenn's helmeted face as he sat in waiting within the Mercury-Atlas 6. What a beautiful reminder of the emotions hidden beneath the astronauts' stoic exteriors. Additionally, Kaufman's hiring of avant-garde filmmaker Jordan Belson as a special effects artist strikes me as fairly ingenious. Along with Belson's recreations of Earth seen from orbit, the impressionistic cloud surfaces and John Glenn's "fireflies" go a long way in communicating to us not just what it looks like, but what it feels like to see the universe from such a perspective. For the billions of us who will never see space the way the Mercury astronauts do, only the awe of seeing beautiful art is comparable.
Philip Kaufman is apparently notorious for creating films considered too lengthy for the filmgoing public, but THE RIGHT STUFF justifies his intensive process. From sharp characterizations to fleeting moments of unearthly beauty, he crafts an enormous mosaic of a truly titanic span of history. The film breathes with a lived-in sense of how landmark moments in human history are surrounded by mundane ones. Life goes on for everyone involved, as Project Mercury was neither the beginning nor the end of their lives. Through hindsight, we can see the lives of these astronauts and the people they knew, so ordinary in most respects, made legendary through the weight of their accomplishments and our recollection of their story. This film knows better than most that glory is brief and life is long, but it is able to acknowledge those seemingly contradictory understandings without trivializing one or the other. That makes THE RIGHT STUFF a very wise film, just as FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS was imbued with the wisdom of an artist who's spent decades negotiating his own legend. For while Project Mercury was a human undertaking like any other, its resonance as a legend comes from our awe in the face of the universe's vastness. History often gives birth to its legends by accident, but it's the people who believe in those tales that immortalize them. Our narratives reflect who we are, because we use them to grasp at what makes us human. This is the story of our first steps toward higher understanding, a necessarily human narrative that, in its telling, catches glimmers of the transcendent.
(photo credit: en.wikipedia.org)
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