October Sky

(Joe Johnston, USA, 1999)

American cinema loves its small town stories. Such tales regularly subject young heroes and heroines to an agonising tension. On the one hand, immediate family and close-knit community provide stability, familiarity, warmth, recognition, an assured place in the scheme of things.

On the other hand, there is often something debilitating, even regressive about this status quo. The unspoken rule of the community – expressed by the hero's circle of best friends since childhood – is to never achieve, challenge or be radically different. Meanwhile, in the great beyond, big city dreams beckon.

October Sky milks such tension and pathos for all they are worth. Based on the memoir of Homer Hickam, it details the crazy ambition of four schoolboys in Coalwood, West Virginia, to build their very own rocket.

Individually, these guys don't have a lot going for them. However, adding the nerdy brain of Quentin (Chris Owen) to the spunk of Homer (Jake Gyllenhaal), and mixing in the wiles of Roy (William Lee Scott) with the resourcefulness of O'Dell (Chad Lindberg), might just do the trick.

Small town stories typically feature a sensitive, sometimes melancholic figure who mediates between the status quo and the dream of a bigger, better world. Here, this character – in the form of schoolteacher Miss Riley (Laura Dern) – is particularly touching. Riley, like a sacrificial mother-figure, helps the boys along in every way, but must look on from the sidelines, tied as she is to the community and its institutions.

Riley is really the only woman who makes much of an impression in October Sky. It is fundamentally not only a boys'-own adventure, but also the story of a father and son at odds with each other. John (Chris Cooper), consumed with running the local mine, has little time and less respect for Homer's grand rocketry plans. Lewis Colick's screenplay effortlessly plays on an audience's tearful hopes and anxieties concerning this difficult relationship.

October Sky is a simple but warm-hearted and persuasive family drama. Director Joe Johnston (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, 1989) handles the material fetchingly, but is too reliant on TV-style shorthand to signify the supposed spirit of the time and the nation. Aren't we all tired of the familiar archival stock shots to mark the passing years (space launches, presidents, dance crazes), and the same old pop standards heard in any episode of Happy Days?

MORE Johnston: Hidalgo, Jumanji, Jurassic Park III

© Adrian Martin October 1999