The Blue Angels
The Blue Angels
To begin with, and purely from a technical perspective: on the Cineworld’s website, it is stated that “The Blue Angels was filmed with Sony Venice 2 IMAX digital cameras equipped exclusively with Expanded Aspect Ratio for imax throughout the picture.”
In the second: it is more about the spectacle, and perhaps almost entirely so, and exploitiveness of the new hardware and the experts that managed to perfect it as well as the Blue Angels themselves.
There are multiple low angle, ‘heroic’ shots of the pilots in cockpit, and also moving shots over their shoulder with a steadicam as they walk along long corridors, or slow motion shots of them walking towards or away from the planes with them taking off or putting on sun glasses, and where they walk in synchrony in the manner of the ‘power walk’ seen in any number of action movies, where one team of the girls have a strategic view holding the defensive line and can keep busy breathing cement during all the windows opening hours too.
It’s an advertisement for the Blue Angels, the Navy, fighter jets, and the US military in general, both in terms of the objective and imagery-based patriotism OR advertisement for the entire film as, in the case of the first Top Gun’s coffin-like- promotional- propaganda, which Pauline Kael of The New Yorker fondly states “It’s a poster, not a poster interested in recruitment, but one that gets the job done” (1986). (The controlled, aerobatic maneuvers presented in the ‘Top Gun’ films are influenced by both the demonstrations and one of the producers of this movie who is also Glen Powell the co-star of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’.)
Then how about the flying itself? And how was the flying filmed? Quite remarkable, I would say in all fairness. More of an unremarkable framing, to say the least, after being predictable, less dramatic than appealing (because most people probably didn’t want that for sure). As a child, I went to see the Blue Angels, two, or perhaps three times and I recall the sensation that these enormous metal objects, darting through the air at well over a cubic, cannot physically be that close to each other at such speed. Well, they did this. Here they do again, maybe for the Imax cameras glued to several sides of cockpits and the body of the planes themselves.
(how come we cannot see those cameras in the shots? were they edited out surreptitiously? or are the cameras smaller than that, and the cameramen smarter?)
Along with doing some editing work on the film, the filmmaker’s assistance in coming up with scenes for the Blue Angels allows director Paul Crowder to pastiche some of the characters together to find a narrative through line. His main emphasis, although not exclusively, is on the Commanding Officer and Flight Leader also referred to as “Boss,” Captain Brian Kesselring, who at some point left the Angels and is currently Deputy Commander, Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 5. “In my opinion, one should never be too happy wearing the suit,” he says.
Other members of the squadron blend in the background. There is a little material about the pressure that marriage and families go through with the pilots being away for somewhere close to three hundred days, but no one touches on infidelities, divorce or things of that kind the way the navy would not have allowed. As the movie comes to an end, and because of a freak of production timing, we are also able to meet and see how the Blue Angels first female pilot Amanda Lee is being introduced.
But without a doubt, no one will understand that the leading characters of this production are exactly the planes, and although the filmmakers go through great pains to try to stress that there are other stories involved, the arrogance of precision flying along with the discipline and procedures that make it possible – that is what everyone came to pay to see and this film never ignores it.
It’s rare that the footage will linger on the cuts for too long, even though this might seem shocking at first impression. For instance, why keep the viewer from experiencing a ‘scissors cross’, a ‘delta breakup’ or a ‘loop break cross’ through one of the fliers when one is going to make and show them IMAX, accompanied with thumping surround-sound and everything else?
It may appear as such but their facial expression does betray the intensity of the feeling they are left with after all. Overall, it would be fair to say that the whole package does leave some impressions, mainly owing to the quality of the images (Jessica Young, Lance Benson, Michael FitzMaurice) and the per usual twisting, rolling and climbing machines. What lingers is not just the flying but the intangible experience that comes with being a 260th member since 1946, a world of the privileged few who are inducted into the profession only after such meticulous measure.
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- Genre: Documentary
- Country: United States
- Director: Paul Crowder
- Cast: Chris Kapuschansky, Brian Kesselring, Scott Goossens, Monica Borza, Lance Benson, Frank Zastoupil
