2023-09-14 19:18:09
Migration stories in film are as diverse as the process of migrating itself. There are heartbreaking stories with sad endings, there are those with elements of romance and there are stories of overcoming. “Millions of kilometers away”, the new Prime Video movie has a little of all that. Inspired by real life Jose Hernandez, the plot begins with his trip from Mexico to the United States to work with his family as farmers in the city of California. Still a child, José must spend long hours in the fields and then try not to fall asleep in class, where his problems with the English language seem to be overcome by a talent that a teacher soon notices: mathematics. Thus, José begins to dream of reaching the stars and the corn that he collects in the fields takes the shape of rockets.
Alejandra Márquez, a Mexican filmmaker known internationally for her work on the film “Las Niñas Bien” (2018), uses many figures from José’s childhood imagination to build the visual universe of her film. “I think cinema is regarding absorbing sensations and then finding the perfect symbols to communicate what you felt, it is an artifact that allows you to build meaning from symbols and José’s story can be summarized in that symbol of a child who plays with a corn rocket,” explains the director during a Zoom conversation with Skip Intro of “El Comercio.”
When you are a child, summer vacations are synonymous with joy and fun. For José, the arrival of summer meant the beginning of the time of the year that he hated most: because he faced the harsh reality of having to work 7 days a week collecting fruits and vegetables in the fields. Normally, it was something he had to balance with his studies, but if it came to school, his parents did their best to free him from other burdens.
José remembers that his father had a phrase that he repeated to him and his older brothers: “If you don’t study, you are living your future, there will be nothing else for you but the countryside.” But it was not always easy for the family to help them dedicate themselves to academics. The constant moves so that his parents might work in different crops meant that José did not have good grades. What’s more, it wasn’t until he was 12 when he began to speak English more fluently. This happened because a teacher, who saw potential in the child, decided to meet with her parents to remind them that a tree does not bear good fruit unless it takes root in one place.
Two years earlier, in 1972, little José had been shocked when he saw the reports on television regarding the Apollo 17, the last mission in which humans reached the moon. And that made me begin to nourish the dream of one day also going out into space.
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Interview regarding “A million kilometers”. (Source: Skip Intro)
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Portrait of a fighter
In the film, actor Michael Peña is responsible for playing José Hernández in his adult version: when he has managed to overcome the hardships of school to graduate as an engineer at the university and cannot get out of his head the desire to apply for the space program from NASA. For Hernández, the choice of the protagonist might not have been more accurate: “It was not difficult for Michael to understand my story, because he is also Mexican-American. He comes from the Chicago area and his family is also migrant. “I think he identified a lot with everything that happened to me,” the real José told us through a Zoom connection when remembering the interviews he had with the artist to resolve his doubts regarding the construction of the character.
“We had virtual meetings, because the process was during the time of the pandemic and in those meetings he asked me questions, he asked me for details so he might project them in the film. But I think he understood everything and he simply wanted to project feelings of what happened. “I was lucky enough to visit the set and see with my own eyes how everything was developing and I pay my respects to Alejandra for her work as a director: it is difficult to condense an entire life into two hours and she has done it extremely well,” highlights the astronaut, who also recorded a cameo for one of the final scenes of the film.
José Hernández and his mother on the day of his graduation as an engineer at the University of the Pacific. He would later earn a master’s degree from UC Santa Barbara.
“A millions of kilometers” achieves its best rhythm when it tells us how José Hernández goes from being an engineer to an astronaut. We see how he is rejected 11 times and he begins an exercise in perseverance with scenes that evoke a “Rocky” or a “The Pursuit of Happyness.” But already within NASA, the fight to be taken seriously is just as complex, especially when there are not many people with whom you can identify.
“There are very few people of color as astronauts at NASA,” highlights Hernández, recalling that, during his first months in the space program, he met Kalpana Chawla, an Indian astronaut who had a tragic end, but who served as his inspiration in the most critical moments of your process.
Kalpana Chawla died in the 2003 STS-107 Columbia Mission accident.
“She confessed to me that she felt strange being in that environment and that she was glad that I was there, because there should be more of us. He told me regarding his efforts, because being there is difficult, and he always reminded me that if they selected me it was because I was capable, that I had to change my chip to recognize my abilities,” the astronaut told us regarding his colleague, who appears in the film in person. by actress Sarayu Blue.
Kalpana Chawla died in 2003 when, due to a technical failure, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated just 16 minutes before landing on solid ground. This event had a strong impact on José Hernández and his colleagues. “I was very happy when they selected her to go to space. You can imagine what it was like when the accident happened, it was very, very sad and it affected all of us a lot. But as a tribute to her, I kept going. I don’t think she would have liked me to give up already. Rather, in honor of her, I continued,” Hernández told us in the Zoom connection.
Tribute to the origins
In the film, in addition to José’s parents and a school teacher, José Hernández’s wife, played by Rosa Salazar, has a great weight in the plot. The average age for a person to enter the NASA space program is 34 years old, José had already been rejected 6 times when he had far surpassed that age. It was his wife who, seeing him regarding to give up, told him: “Let NASA disqualify you, don’t do it yourself before trying.”
The real José Hernández on a NASA mission. Scene of Rosa Salazar and Michael Peña in “A Million Miles Away”.
So it was that at 41 years old and on his 12th attempt, José was told yes. The film develops very well all the steps that the Mexican had to follow to achieve his goal and delivers several messages that the protagonist hopes will resonate deeply with viewers.
“I think a very beautiful message of the film is that it is worth dreaming big. I would like our people, our migrants, to see that they can move forward, despite what they leave behind in their country. And I would also like my story to be a message for parents, so that they create a good environment for their children,” says the astronaut, who recognizes that without that family spirit he would not have been able to achieve his dream.
For filmmaker Alejandra Márquez, there is also another transcendental message: that no one should be ashamed of their origins. “On the contrary, we should appreciate them,” emphasizes the filmmaker, who put special detail into a score full of themes that pay tribute to Mexican culture and the mixture that has occurred with migration to the United States.
“There is no job that is humiliating or that does not allow the generation of knowledge and ethics. That happened to José, who began his life as a farmer. For me it is very important to emphasize that we must honor our origins and not look outside, because what we need is within us. The world makes us believe that we are always missing something, but in reality you have everything within you. You just have to look for it and exercise it to be able to do what you want,” he says.
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“A Million Kilometers” will be available streaming from September 15.
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