A Million Miles Away

A true story that begins in California. José Hernández grows up in the fields. His family are migrant workers from Mexico; they follow the harvest and change towns through the year. The boy attends several schools a year. He finishes none of them. A teacher talks to the family. She suggests they settle in one place. They settle in Stockton. The boy holds on at school. Then he studies engineering. From there the film is a story about applications. José wants to be an astronaut. He applies and is rejected. He applies again. Rejected again. This repeats eleven times. After each rejection he adds something. He gets a pilot's licence, learns to dive, studies Russian, works in a laboratory. The narrative does not pass over this in a montage; each rejection is its own scene and he is a little more worn each time. On the twelfth he is accepted. What the narrative is interested in is not space but a list of what is missing: its idea is that the man applies a recipe he had from his father; choose a target, learn how far away it is, draw a map, find what you lack, and work. His wife Adela is a separate line. She builds her own business and the narrative gives it not as a subplot but as equal work. The family line is always running. His father sees what his son's dream is costing and at one point objects. The space section is short. The narrative puts its weight on the years on the ground. José Hernández went into space in 2009 and became the first NASA astronaut who had worked as a farm labourer. Alejandra Márquez Abella directed. Michael Peña, Rosa Salazar, Julio Cesar Cedillo and Veronica Falcón are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes true stories and narratives about migration. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hardness; the narrative runs in the genre's known shape and plays too safe in its emotional moments.