My first runner up holds a special place in my heart because it was used heavily for a communications class group project in college. That project was done over 23 years ago and the the scenes we used to make our arguments about leadership are memorable and relevant today. Since it was also pre-youtube, we had to get our clips by using the CTA department's VHS dubbing equipment. We actually used several movie clips in this project as it was meant to provide good and bad examples of all of the 7 different leadership styles we’d studied that semester. Finding examples of bad leadership was easy and fun to do. I recall how quickly our team came to consensus that the meeting depicted in ‘Heathers’ of the Westerberg High School principal with his staff was a perfect example of a failed laissez-faire leader. This point is made especially clear in this scene after being confronted with the issue of a student "suicide" (it isn't known that the student was murdered and set up to look like a suicide at this point, hence all the hoopla surrounding how one might use the word myriad).
2. Apollo 13 (1995)
Ron Howard worked with a very limited budget, and immediately challenged himself further by rejecting the opportunity to use NASA video to realistically depict simple little things like launching a 36 story building weighing 6.8 million pounds using 7.5 million pounds of thrust. NASA footage would be accurate and by default, realistic. But after viewing, the film crew quickly determined that it was also sterile and not sufficiently dramatic for a major motion picture. Howard could have resorted to CGI but didn't like the fake look that would give. This meant that the vast majority of the special effects like the liftoff footage in this scene, again shot with a very limited budget was obtained using a scale miniature model, yet it looks 1,000% real. In this scene, you'll also be introduced to Eugene Krantz (Ed Harris) who I'll get to later as one of the main reasons this film tells such an outstanding and inspirational story:
I think it is safe to say that I won't be spoiling anything if I mention that this display of technological awesomeness evolves into a story about problem solving in the most hostile environment imaginable with very limited resources and even less time. No pressure right? And this is where our college communications class team looked to Ed Harris' portrayal of Eugene Krantz as a model of outstanding democratic leadership. A leader who uses this style is described as participative in nature, involving team members while making critical decisions. This type of leader best fits in an organization where team members are highly skilled and experienced. Krantz wants to hear all of the best ideas and make sure that everyone is clear on what the expectations are, then uses the most appropriate subject matter experts to delegate the critical tasks to. In a crisis, the most effective team will recognize the urgency of the situation, but will not succumb to emotion and will not act on solutions until the problem has been clearly defined. An outstanding leader will be able to keep egos in check and keep everyone focused on clear objectives, empowering the team to be effective.
But even when we have all the best and the brightest with all of their ultra competence, we all know how hard it can be against such steep odds to not give into the thought that something is a lost cause. It becomes the elephant in the room at mission control and in the crippled Aquarius spacecraft. Its what everyone knows they are up against, but nobody dare say out loud. But to the families, friends, loved ones, and others around the world helplessly watching and waiting on pins and needles to see if the crew would make it home, it became not a matter of expertise or competency, but one of faith. And most of them were running out of it. For me personally, the Apollo 13 mission occurred before I was born, and I watched the Space Shuttle Challenger blow up on a tv in my elementary school classroom. I was all too aware of how badly things can go when a spacecraft design flaw emerges during a mission. Howard uses this moment of particularly high tension to allow Mission Commander Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) to become their pastor and give them a reason to continue to have faith through footage of an interview with him prior to launch:
The thing that I love about the sequencing here is that we then cut to the crew who is showing signs of giving into fatigue and losing faith, when they learn that their intimately trusted former crew mate Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise) is working on a solution to their current dilemma. Mattingly was held back from the flight due to concern about exposure to the measles and is shown watching the launch by his Corvette from a distance with a sense of wonder and regret about missing the mission.
I'm not going to lie....these are times where it is tough to maintain faith and hope. Our politics are disgustingly negative, selfish and cruel, and there is little sense of any higher purpose to aspire to. I grew up in an era of sunny optimism. We had the cold war, but it was winding down, and we saw the advent of cable tv, MTV, cordless and soon after cellular phones, the home computer...I could go on. We also grew up in the golden age of grunge music, which I actually characterize as a positive force more than a negative one. Grunge music represented the freedom that we were harnessing in how we express ourselves and can be successful while reinventing norms and defying expectations. It was a healthy purging of everything that we knew was f'd up and it was a relief to express it. Experiencing the 80s and 90s as a teenager and young adult to me meant having a sense that there were better days ahead and that our culture was aspiring to the American vision of going forward pursuing a more perfect union.
It is such a contrast to the toxic strew of darkness that we all swim in today. So I think of this movie as a touchstone and a reminder of different times. The Apollo program was a realized vision of those grand American aspirations that we Gen Xers also believed would be our legacy, and even when Apollo had a serious and nearly fatal failure, it evolved into one of the most inspirational stories of that program in its own unique way. And that aspiration is the real star of the show.
When things feel hopeless, take a moment to let Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell tell you that "you never know what events are going to transpire to get you home." This movie is very special as a tribute to the Apollo program and to the human spirit that made it happen. But it is most special as a reminder that we can and will be better when we capture that spirit again.
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