October Sky

October Sky (1999) is set in a coal town in West Virginia in 1957. The night Sputnik passes overhead, Homer Hickam decides to build a rocket. Everyone in town has a future in the mine, his father runs it, and assumes his son will follow him down. The story is real. Homer Hickam later became an engineer at NASA and published his memoir in 1998 as Rocket Boys. The film's title is an anagram of the book's. October Sky uses the same letters as Rocket Boys. Hickam explained the change: Universal's research indicated that women over thirty would not go to a film called Rocket Boys. The book was later reissued under the film's title. Joe Johnston directed. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Homer, Chris Cooper his father and Laura Dern his teacher. It was Gyllenhaal's first lead. It cost 25 million dollars and grossed 34.7 million worldwide. Critics liked it; Roger Ebert wrote that it had deep values and singled out the relationship between father and son. It runs 107 minutes. Good for: adaptations of true stories, conflict between fathers and sons, and films about young people and science. Less good for: the film prepares its emotional peaks openly and the score underlines them. The strike and the labour question begin and are never developed. The women function as support.