Mustangs to the Moon!
Last week saw me seeing two more movies. The first, on video because it's old, was Hidalgo, starring Viggo Mortenson. Nico, who selected it, maintains that their relationship is merely platonic.
Hidalgo is the almost certainly entirely fictional story of Frank T. Hopkins and his trusty mustang, Hidalgo, as they participate in a 3000 mile horse race through the Arabian desert. The movie claims to be based on a real story, and there was a man named Frank Hopkins who did long-distance races, but there is no evidence that he went to Arabia, or in fact that the race in question ever happened at all (let alone every year for a thousand years, as claimed by the movie). Whatever.
The movie, although extremely Disneyfied, is a pretty tolerable underdog story where Hopkins/Hidalgo beat all odds to defy the expectations of the Bedouin clans and the few snotty Europeans who are also involved. The plot is predictable, and the dialogue is clunky and heavy-handed, but I expect nothing less from Disney.
The most interesting bit of Hidalgo is the way it promotes the message of personal will versus blood as a determining factor of success. Hidalgo is a American Mustang, in other words, a non-pureblooded horse, without a traceable ancestry. To the other racers, this is as shocking and repellent as riding a horse/pig mix. Gee, I hope they won't find their preconceptions of what constitutes equine quality/honor/class shattered by the end of the film.
Of course, Hopkins is also a mixed-blood creature (half white, half Indian), so all the nasty comments directed at his horse apply to him as well. Gee, I hope they won't find their preconceptions of what constitutes HUMAN quality/honor/class shattered by the end of the film.
There's a lot of Disney-style hijinks over the course of the race, as it becomes clear that virtually everyone in the race ('cept for Hopkins) is willing to lie, cheat, and kill to win the $100,000 that first place gets you (this is in 1890's ish, when $100,000 was a lot). Also, there's some kind of political infighting among the Bedouins, which Hopkins gets embroiled in. All in all, it's overly complicated and not very subtle, but the film's heart is in the right place.
A different version of this message can be found in the infinitely more watchable, actually-based-on-a-true-story In the Shadow of the Moon, the Ron Howard bankrolled documentary about the astronauts who participated in the Apollo missions (with the notable omission of Neil Armstrong, who is apparently some kind of hermit nowadays). It's in theaters now.
This story is also about regular humans triumphing over various kinds of adversity, and also getting swept into political issues. Actually, these guys aren't really regular humans. They all started in the Air Force, and all have a strong edge of geekiness in the form of mad aeronautical engineering skills. Listening to their stories, I was continually delighted to realize that every man we sent to the moon was a nerd. They got to go to the moon not because they were the sons of senators, or because they were rich, but because they had, in Tom Wolfe's phrase, the right stuff.
The film basically takes the form of the astronauts answering off-screen questions (we never hear the filmmakers – and that's a good thing), alternating with archival materials and old film of the missions themselves. Even more absorbing than their accounts of the actual missions (which are still spine-tingly, even though you know the outcome already) are their revelations of how their worldview changed after returning from the moon. Perhaps what best of all, though, is the fact that someone had the insight to do this documentary now, while these men are still alive and accessible in the first person. No doubt, in a hundred years, some screenwriter for Disney will recast this event as a mythical 300,000 mile race to the Moon, which pits honest Americans against the scheming Russians. But at least there's this film now, to show what was real, and to show that the truth often needs no embellishment.