Who better than that to dare leave this planet, man?” “Somebody who knows what it’s like to dive into the unknown. José thinks about space every hour of every day. A Million Miles Away plays this dream as both secret passion and unchangeable, somewhat mystical force several characters, from his best friend and cousin Beto (Bobby Soto) to his wife Adela (Rose Salazar) to his eldest son Julio (Carlos S Sanchez) ask why José wants to go to space, and his answer is generally some version of: he just does. One teacher, Miss Young (Michelle Krusiec) notices José’s penchant for mathematics, his hunger to learn, his dream to be an astronaut. (The film switches often between Spanish and English, particularly in the first third.) The hardship is a fact of life, as is the whirlwind of José’s memories and his youthful wonder at the stars. A roving camera brings us into the field, more playful than depressing an opportunity for scolding turns into a motivational speech. But Abella frames these scenes through young José’s (an adorable Juan Pablo Monterrubio) curiosity and naivety. In different hands, the scenes of José’s youth as a farm worker – 4.15am wake-up to the radio in the dark, cut and bruised hands, a quick succession of indistinguishable, cold American schools – could be played for pity or milked for trauma. But in the hands of director Alejandra Márquez Abella, it is impossible not to be charmed by this tale of tenacity, commitment and community it’s a real-life, straightforward encapsulation of the American Dream, entertainingly told and smartly trained on one Mexican American’s family’s experience over blunt moralizing.Ībella and fellow screenwriters Bettina Gilois and Hernán Jiménez, keep things moving at a brisk, chipper pace, starting with José’s peripatetic childhood helping his parents, Salvador (Julio César Cedillo) and Julia (Verónica Falcón), from Michoacán, on produce farms in California’s Central valley. It hits the usual beats of space heroism – the ambition of a gravity-defying dream, the vaunted heroism of the space program, the sacrifices in the name of science and patriotism – with chapters delineated by “ingredients to success” in life, first outlined by his father, in line with Hernández’s later career as a motivational speaker.Īll of this could be ho-hum and too sunny it sometimes is. A Million Miles Away, the Amazon biopic of the astronaut José Hernández, has all the ingredients of an inspiring, sanded-down success story: Hernández, played capably by Michael Peña, went from itinerant student to barrier-breaking electrical engineer to the International Space Station, the first migrant farm worker to go to space.
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