| The
Astronaut Farmer
is the first mainstream film from twin brothers and indie
collaborators Mark and Mike Polish (North Fork).
Astronaut Farmer is more accessible and perhaps less
interesting than Sundance hit North Fork but satisfies
as a family film adults can enjoy as well, if they don’t
look too closely.
Billy
Bob Thornton delivers a graceful performance as Charles Farmer,
Texas rancher and astronaut wannabe, making a final attempt
to achieve his dream against all odds—by building a
rocket ship in his barn.
Yes,
that would be a real rocket ship. Because Charles is actually
a real NASA program veteran who dropped out of astronaut training
years ago because
of a family tragedy. He doesn’t want his dream to die
like his father’s did; he wants and needs to teach his
own kids a different lesson. “You’d better know
what you want to do before somebody else knows it for you,”
he warns his son. Virginia Madsen lights up the screen as
his incredibly supportive wife, who manages a sunny disposition,
a waitress gig, three kids, and a mortgage-laden, stargazing
husband with the forbearance of a saint—while her father
(Bruce Dern) has the good sense to die and leave them money
at precisely the right moment. See what I mean about not looking
too closely?
The
real weakness here is that Astronaut Farmer flits
between fantasy and family drama without committing to either.
Thornton’s character reveals so little that we simply
don’t get him. If he’s a regular guy, why doesn’t
he just go back to NASA and work there instead of, incredibly,
building a spaceship? If he’s an eccentric, we don’t
see it in the pastoral normalcy of his life.
What’s
interesting, though, about The Astronaut Farmer is
that it plays with same theme as The Lives of Others:
the eternal struggle of the state versus the individual. As
Farmer’s rocket nears completion, he sets out to purchase
the requisite tonnage of rocket fuel that, in a post 9/11
world, soon brings a convoy of black FBI SUVs roaring onto
his ranch. Farmer’s foils in this endeavor are the various
and sundry bureaucrats and social workers and Homeland Security
agents who fuss and fume about the propriety of his flight
plan, and isn’t it really a WMD, and what about those
mortgages?
But
eventually Farmer proves that a maverick and an optimist can
and must fight city hall. He’s a man who owns his own
soul, even if he has to fight for it, just like his filmic
predecessors, Mr. Smith and George Bailey, did. Even
Georg Dreyman of Lives of Others inherits the mantle—he
could just as well have uttered the movie’s tag line
of “If we don’t have our dreams, we have nothing.”
Albeit in a more lighthearted vein, the optimism and courage
portrayed in this film make it well worth a look, especially
if you want to teach someone too young for The Lives of
Others an important (and painless) civics lesson.
--
Patricia Ducey
 |
