She Should Have Gone to the Moon (2008) by Ulrike Kubatta not only meets the 21st century audience expectations for a documentary, but goes beyond them. This beautifully shot film provides an insight into a little known chapter of the American history of space exploration and reveals once again how age-long preconceptions can sometimes alter, if not hamper, social progress.
The documentary tells a story of the female test pilot Jerri Truhill, who, together with another twelve select women-aviators, was part of NASA’s top secret Mercury 13 programme in 1961. Trained to become America’s first astronauts, these brave women, who sacrificed a lot for the sake of their dream and perfomed much better than men in the multiple enduring physical tests, were dismissed without any explanation or apology weeks before America opened the first page in its space history. Although recently NASA did acknowledge the existence of the programme and paid some tribute to the achievements of these amazing ladies, very few people among general public have heard anything about them and would be surprised to hear America even considered sending women in space as early as in 1961.
The film does follow the typical documentary pattern, but only in parts: it attempts to reassess a historical era through the character and life story of a rebellious woman, who largely refused to follow a conventional life style expected of her by the times she lived in and whose very personality seems to be cut out for a movie. When the audience first encounter this remarkable, stylishly dressed and made-up lady in her early 80ies talking to the filmmaker in her suburban kitchen, it is hard to believe that Jerri Turhill was once a pilot, let alone went through horrendously enduring, life-threatening tests in preparation for a space flight. Yet, Jerri’s feisty and, at the same time, fundamentally calm and philosophically pragmatic personality shines through from the very first minutes of the film, when the audience hear her voice in the recording of a phone conversation with Ulrike, months before the director ventures to the US to meet the remarkable pilot and unfulfilled astronaut in person.
However, there is more to the way She Should Have Gone to the Moon creates awareness of the long forgotten past and reinterpretes it from a modern perspective. While the ever-energetic Jerri keeps her feet firmly on the ground, both in the literal and metaphorical sense, Ulrike adds a personal touch to the story of her heroine. It is quite obvious that Jerri is not bitter about her life: she comes across as an incredibly strong woman who has survived and succeeded on many levels, despite all her sacrifice and a major disappointment that followed it. In contrast, the filmmaker’s vision of her heroine’s life is more poetic: the narration is interrupted every now and then by what appears as almost lyrical scenes. Thus, we follow the enigmatic image of a woman in a white flying suit wandering through the sand dunes – this metaphor of a journey into the unknown is yet more powerful as we come to realize her destination will forever remain beyond her reach. We also see a little girl, supposedly the young Jerri, who is dreaming of flying an airplane after having sat in a pilot’s cockpit at the age of four: the flickering crystals of the chandelier seem to reflect the fragility of her dreams… This overall contrast between the pragmatic, funny and at times even abrupt narration by the heroine and Ulrike’s somewhat romaticised vision of Jerri’s life and aborted mission miraculously work in sync and create a harmony. As a result, the film speaks to virtually everyone – from feminists to hard-line chauvinists.
This is even more so, as a lot in the purely documentary material shown in the film welcomes multiple interpretations and appeals to a wide range of viewers. The old photographs of the young Jerri perched on a wing of a plane make her look almost like a sex-symbol of the 1950s: despite the unbelievably “male” profession for a female of her generation, Jerri’s physical attractiveness highlighted by her impeccable clothes and hairstyle make her an almost classical “object of the look”. Female audience invariably tend to identify with her, while male viewers fall under her spell. Ulrike’s lyrical vignettes seem to resonate with this perception: towards the end of the film we are exposed to a fairly long sequence in which an enigmatic female singer enchants the audience with her femme fatale looks, moves and singing, as if challenging the modern audience to disprove that a woman has long been and perhaps still is primarily seen as an object, attractive and plesant to look at, but not quite capable of making history. Of course, by that stage of the film the viewers already know that the decision not to send women to space in 1961 was made against all evidence and logic by men in power who were, as Jerri herself philosophically puts it, “the product of their time”.
Overall, She Should Have Gone to the Moon seems to achieve much more than a traditional documentary would even set out to. The magical power of the artist makes the film flicker like a multi-faceted stone in the ray of light: on a socially charged level it makes a strong and clear statement that addresses both the past and the present, while questioning the future; yet, from the purely artistic perspective, the film undeniably creates a set of moods that appeal to the audience’s emotions, literally putting them into the heroine’s mind and heart for the duration of the film and, hopefully, even longer.
Dr. Elena Domaratskaya
