User Reviews

A simple and effective film about what life is all about, responding to challenges. It took a lot of gall for Homer and his friends to be able to grow into manhood without falling in the trap of a prefabricated future that runs from father to son, to be a miner in the local mine and never get out of that fate. It took also three different challenges for Homer and his friends to conquer a personal and free future. The challenge of the first ever man-made artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, a Soviet satellite, a milestone in human history, a turning point that Homer and his friends could not miss, did not want to miss. Then the challenge of science and applied mechanics to calculate and to devise a rocket from scratch or rather from what they could gather in books and order in their minds. Finally the challenge of a world that resists and refuses and tries to force you back into the pack, even with an untimely accident that forces you to get back into the pack for plain survival necessity, and even then Homer proved he had the guts to accept the challenge that was blocking for a while his own plans and dreams. But there is another side of the story that the film does not emphasize enough. Homer is the carrier of the project but he is also the carrier of the inspiration he and his friends need. If he is the one who is going to get the university scholarship, because his friends gave him precedence, his friends will also be able to get on their own roads and tracks and step out of the mining fate, thanks to the energy his inspiring example sets in front of their eyes. It is hard at times not to follow the example of the one who is like a beacon on a difficult road. But the film is also effective to show how the father resisted this dream because for him science was not the fabric of a true man, like mining or football. The working class fate that was so present in those 1950s and 1960s and still is present in some areas is too often enforced by the traditional thinking of the father. If the mother does not have the courage to speak up one day, the working class fate I am speaking of becomes a tremendous trap. Here too the film is effective and it should make some parents think. This might have been the fourth challenge Homer had to face: the challenge of taking a road that was not the one pointed at and programmed by his own father.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

There's not much original in this story of a high school kid who yearns to send rockets into the sky rather than work in the local coal mine. It's all pretty formulaic. But formulas are in such common use because they are dependable. Who would argue with A squared plus B squared equals C squared? They get the job done.

Jake Gyllenhaal is the obsessed kid. He looks ordinary and is fascinated by an arcane subject like rocket design in a way that only a teen ager can be. He lives in a small West Virginia town where everything revolves around the coal mine which, like the town itself, is moribund. He has his mother's love, of course, but his dad (Chris Cooper) grew up in the mines and is now a kind of manager, and Gyllenhaal's aspirations occasion some irritation in his father. Cooper wants him to come down in the mines like everybody else instead of fooling around with this nonsense and worshiping Werner von Braun. Cooper makes a particular point of never attending any of Gyllenhaal's experimental launches. Gyllenhaal's teacher (Laura Dern) recognizes that the kid is a wizard and supports him.

At first the others in town treat him and his interest in rocketry as half loony. One by one, though, the kid draws others into his sphere. A pimply nerd and a handful of other alienated students join him in building rockets that at first explode if anyone looks cross-eyed at them. Eventually others, including a black machinist at the mine, help him build rockets that act, not like inverted pendulums, but like rockets.

There are, naturally, some obstacles along the way. His father's constant belittling of him, for one thing. And then there's the matter of finding money for materials, which leads to one or two comic incidents. Then his father is injured in a mine accident for which the company won't pay, so Gyllenhaal must drop out of school and go down and work in the mines for a while, accompanied by plangent violins. But in the end, he is sent to the Science Fair in Indianapolis, where he displays his rockets and their components. The score swells into an orgasmic triumph. (It's the International Geophysical Year of 1958.) Does Gyllenhaal win first prize? No power on earth could force an answer from me. Gyllenhaal returns to Coal Community, WVA, where he sets off one last big celebratory rocket. The entire town of Coaldorf has attended, everyone bursting with pride. Gyllenhaal dedicates this rocket to everyone who has helped him in his travails, listing them one by one, before finally reaching "my father" -- and, lo, there is Dad edging his way to the front of the crowd! Final shot: the space shuttle being launched from Cape Canaveral.

It's got every cliché in the book but it's kind of sweet too. None of the performances stands out, although Chris Cooper does a good job with the role of the all-but-fossilized, but gentle, father. He's a pretty good actor.

Of all the films about adolescents finding their own voice, this one is about average, but it's suitable for family viewing. The kids will understand it as well as the adults, and although their minds may not be exalted, neither will they be turned into suppurating boils. The location shooting is good, too, leading us to understand why Gyllenhaal would like to leave Coalton-sur-mont behind him.