Science of the 20th century brought us many things, good and bad: the atomic bomb, computers, plastic, the elimination of polio. Science enables us to look forward and think of a better future, and nothing quite embodies that ideal than our slow, halting journey into space. Every journey starts somewhere; for America, that journey started in a dusty desert somewhere in California. At least, that's what Philip Kaufman's classic film The Right Stuff would have you believe.
The Right Stuff is a Cold War story, though the actual Cold War is a bit distant. We begin in 1947 with the death of a hotshot test pilot, his experimental plane serving as his funeral pyre. The Army needs more pilots, guys willing to risk death to become the fastest men on Earth. Chuck Yeager, war hero and talented horseback rider, would take the job and ride a rocket-powered plane to fame as the first man to break the sound barrier. A decade later and a handful of the test pilots who flocked to the air base to test new planes for the Army are selected to become part of the Mercury Seven: seven guys who undergo grueling testing to become America's first astronauts. If you know your history, Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union beat them into space, but they in turn were the first to go behind the moon, ultimately forging the path for the Apollo program and the moon landings. The Space Race wasn't just about getting an edge over the Soviets' missile program, it was a matter of national pride.
In filming The Right Stuff, Kaufman is a careful director whose every decision as a filmmaker is calculated. From the way he uses transitions, carefully blends comedy and drama, and develops his movies' characters, he packs a lot of movie into the whopping three-hour-plus runtime. While its narrative structure is necessarily episodic, and there is
definitely a very clear split between the Edwards Air Base chapters and
the Mercury program chapters, Kaufman somehow manages to make it all come together in a coherent package. I've seen it described as "the last 70s movie" but I think it's just as much the first 80s movie, but even that's not totally accurate: it feels almost timeless in the way it seems to solidify all the thinking on tone and pacing that had been churning around Hollywood since Star Wars; if you look closely you can find its DNA in films ranging from Jurassic Park to The Green Mile to Interstellar.
The Right Stuff is a great movie, the kind of movie that only gets made once every so often. It's a who's-who of some of Hollywood's greatest, including Harry
Shearer and Jeff Goldblum, both of them nearly fetal in their roles as recruiters for the space program. I can't say that every joke lands: aside from the way some of the astronauts talk about the nurse doing the tests, there's also a scene where Gus Grissom (who died horribly in a fire during a test launch for Apollo I) is introduced while someone is cooking barbecue at a function in Texas. Lyndon Johnson — a senator and later vice president — is borderline cartoonish, here as comic relief yet deeply unfunny, which I suppose isn't that different from the real LBJ. Yet it's still a compelling watch, the kind of film that slowly wraps its fingers around you and holds you tight, and you've still got the marks on your arm when it lets go.
It's a love letter to the Space Age, and to all the optimism that drove us to the stars.
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