Drew Burnett Gregory is back at Sundance bringing daily updates on the best of LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond. Follow along for more coverage or read her review of Sally below.
Every year at Sundance there are a handful of bio-docs about prominent figures in recent history. These films are rarely groundbreaking as films, but the best ones play a valuable role in creating a more complex portrait of someone whose name has grown ubiquitous. As the first American woman to go to space, Sally Ride is a fitting subject for one of these films. But Ride’s partner of 27 years, Tam O’Shaughnessy, is the true star.
Ride wasn’t out — even to her sister who is also a lesbian — until her death. She told Tam that she could write whatever she wanted in the obituary and Tam wanted to finally be honest. Every time Tam is on-screen that’s true again. She’s delightfully blunt, funny and charming, and matter-of-fact. That she was willing to be kept secret all those years is a testament to her deep love for Sally.
The film does a good job revealing the culture at NASA and in the U.S. at large during the 70’s and 80’s. Ride was closeted as a lesbian, but she couldn’t be closeted as a woman. The overt sexism she faced was immense and it makes an understandable case for why she couldn’t handle any more persecution.
But her sexuality wasn’t the only thing Ride hid. She also underplayed her ambitions. I enjoyed the sections of the film focusing on her queerness, but I also loved the brief look into how eager this person was to fight for what she wanted. Our culture celebrates people who we perceive to be reluctant heroes, but the truth is it takes a certain gumption to take on that amount of visibility. While an anecdote about Ride subtly sabotaging a fellow female astronaut may not be the film’s most wholesome moment, I appreciated this suggestion that not only did Ride care more than she could say in the media, she was also imperfect in that pursuit.
The film is at its weakest in its final chapter when it tries to summarize Ride’s legacy with platitudes. That’s how these kinds of documentaries work. They might dabble with complexity in the middle, but the final moments are there to further codify their subject’s status as an icon.
Was Sally Ride a hero? A trailblazer? An important figure in American and scientific and feminist history? Sure! But after watching this documentary I’ll also think of her as the scientist who flipped some switches to sabotage her coworker’s first test, who drew a map so her crush could visit her in pre-flight quarantine, whose tendency from childhood onward to stand on her tippy-toes won the heart of a woman named Tam O’Shaughnessy.
No one is just an icon. In life, Ride wasn’t allowed to show her full humanity. In death, let’s make sure we don’t make the same mistake.
Sally will be released later this year.
