The Challenger Disaster (2013)

Director: James Hawes                                 Writer: Kate Gartside
Film Score: Chris Letcher                              Cinematography: Lukas Strebel
Starring: William Hurt, Bruce Greenwood, Brian Dennehy and Eve Best

I can remember exactly where I was when I heard about the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986. I was in college and had a chemistry class that morning. My professor was devastated and proceeded to give us a lecture on the nature of liquid hydrogen. It was a sobering day as I also remember watching most of the news footage on the television. What I don’t remember is exactly how long it took for the information about the O-rings to come out. That, as it turns out, was discovered by the Rogers Commission, which investigated the disaster. I learned about Richard Feynman after his death, when his books became extremely popular, but I didn’t know about his participation on the commission until watching The Challenger Disaster on the Science channel the other night.

Though seemingly sedate in terms of visuals, this is an incredible film produced by the BBC. It’s based on Richard Feynman’s last book, What Do You Care What Other People Think? and deals with his participation on the Rogers Commission. Feynman was sick with cancer at the time, but went to Washington at the request of a former student who was now the head of NASA. Though reluctant to go, he made the trip and immediately found himself embroiled on a panel that seemed to want the findings to be unable to be determined. Rogers himself clearly wanted to support NASA and hold them blameless. Well, this went against everything Feynman was about, which was about finding the truth. As soon as he joins the commission he begins rubbing people the wrong way, especially Rogers, who wants to run the commission his way and feels as if Feynman is a loose cannon.

William Hurt plays Feynman and does a fantastic job. Hurt has sort of reemerged in the past few years as a character actor, after he became too old for romantic leads, in films like Vantage Point and Ridley Scott’s version of Robin Hood. He’s tremendous here, as the tired professor, completely in command as a lecturer at Caltech, but utterly out of his element in Washington D.C. Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what’s going on. This is made clear by the teasing he gives the other physicist on the commission who tells him he’s been in Washington for years and Hurt responds, “How is your integrity?” The other scientist is completely offended, even after Hurt tries to tell him it’s a joke. But as someone who believes in finding the truth, he ultimately doesn’t care about other people’s problems with him.

Brian Dennehy has lost much of his strength onscreen and looks old and fragile. Still, he has a certain commanding presence and makes a good former Secretary of State William P. Rogers. British actress Eve Best, who was fairly commanding herself in The King’s Speech, is great here as Sally Ride. But the other standout performer has to be the great Bruce Greenwood as Air Force General Donald Kutyna, and the relationship he develops with Hurt as Feynman is one of the great aspects of the film. All the while Feynman was on the commission he was suffering from the final stages of his cancer, but the search for truth is something he refused to relinquish. In the end, this is not so much a film about the Challenger disaster as it is a film about Richard Feynman, and that’s a tremendous story that has needed to be told. The Challenger Disaster tells in wonderfully.