Sully

Clint Eastwood’s take on the Disaster film incidentally explains why he has endorsed Donald Trump for president.

The film has the usual air disaster film conventions: the cross-section passenger list, the heroic captain, the beautiful and helpful stewardi, the crash threat, experience and survival. But Eastwood makes four radical changes. As usual, the meaning lies in how the director inflects the genre conventions.

One, he puts the crash and survival at the beginning. The suspense is therefore not rooted in the passengers’ experience when Canada Geese choke and knock out both engines, necessitating an emergency landing. Instead the suspense lies in the government committee’s ensuing investigation into whether Captain Chesley Sullenberger made the right decision when he opted to land his 155 passengers on the chilly Hudson River instead of trying to get back to LaGuardia.

Two, instead of the usual tensions and even spats that usually erupt in a threatened flight film, this one depicts a harmonious community. It explicitly pays homage to New York City, its efficient and effective response teams, the community spirit not just on the plane but beyond, in the city-wide celebration of Captain Sully and his amazing landing. A bartender gives him the drink, The Sully, he invented: two shots of Grey Goose and a splash of water. 

Three, the central focus is not on any passenger but on the captain. The 2009 events are intercut with memories of Sully’s earlier experiences, nightmares of what might have happened on that fateful flight, and hallucinations of the plane shearing through Manhattan buildings. Instead of showing the passengers’ faith being tested here it’s the captain’s, as the  formal investigation into his conduct threatens his family’s security, his 40-year career, and his own faith in his judgment. The miracle worker becomes the chief suspect.

Four, the film revives the spirit of Eastwood’s Dirty Harry in a sanitized manner. As Clint’s Callahan tossed away the law book to operate on his own instincts, Tom Hanks’s Sully eschews the operations manual in the 206 seconds he has to make his decision. He instead “eyeballs” the problem and follows his instincts. 

And that’s where the film coheres with Eastwood’s endorsement of Donald Trump. The villains here are the government’s investigating committee that goes by the book, that uses fancy high falutin’ stuff like computer simulations, pilot re-enactments, estimations of lost machinery, and the la-dee-dah like to cast aspersions on the “hero” who simply followed his “instincts.” 
        In Eastwood’s (and little Donnie’s) book, government committees, checks and regulations only interfere in people’s lives and keep a Good Man from Doing the Right Thing by following his gut. Laws are for losers. That’s why Eastwood ran for mayor of Carmel — to get rid of all the red tape in municipal admin — and that’s why the ostensibly successful multiple bankruptcy blatantly lying Trump gets Eastwood’s vote for president of the Disunited States of America. As Trump “loves the uneducated” Eastwood bets on the man of instinct.
        To make that point the film seriously diverges from the historic event. It invents the enquiry board's suspicions about Sully's performance. As the real Sully has pointed out, the committee was not at all prosecutorial. Eastwood invents Sully's victimization by the safety committee to demonize government regulation.

It’s a very personal story for Clint. Hence his closing song: “You tell me your story, I’ll tell you mine.” It’s Sully’s but also Clint’s. But so to twist the facts, falsely to attribute malevolence to a real committee in order to support one's own political position, that is taking artistic license too far. If you have to lie to present a culpable government committee then you don't have a real case. Eastwood  has severely diminished himself -- and Sully, as an advisor on the film --  by distorting their story to make a dubious political point.
       History should matter. Facts should matter. The truth should matter. In a presidential campaign as in other narrative art. A film that so painstakingly recreates the well-known real incident -- the Miracle on the Hudson -- should not have lied to demonize government and the committee members involved. Alas, disregard for the truth and a cynic's disdain for his audience may be other bonds Eastwood finds with his Trump.
       Finally, let me say that I do not come to this position lightly. I used to lecture on the common necessity to inflect details of an event  in order to serve its larger meaning. In Aristotle's terms, history reports what happened only once but the superior fiction (his 'poetry') defines recurring patterns in life. A storyteller -- on page or on screen -- is working in fiction as soon as he starts telling his history. He's looking in the particular event for the recurring pattern.
      Eastwood does not have that defence here. In so dramatically misrepresenting the safety committee Eastwood is not serving the larger meaning but maligning the current government, the still living members of the committee (even if the real Sully insisted on their names being changed in the script) and refuelling the current fire in the presidential campaign that is already casting far too much heat and far too little light. Sully's story is dramatically narrowed by Eastwood's telling, not broadened, as he twisted it to serve his personal platform. His closing song admits but doesn't excuse that.