Over 23 years, Rory Kennedy has made 20 feature documentaries that, sadly, have flown beneath both the public and critical radar. Only four of them have pages on Wikipedia and just five have received enough reviews on Rotten Tomatoes to accurately determine critical “freshness.” According to Box Office Mojo, a mere two of the films she’s directed have reported box office takes totaling $689,415.
As the youngest child of Ethel and the late Robert F. Kennedy, it’s probably a safe assumption that earning money by making movies isn’t Rory Kennedy’s main priority.
On a quality level with her 2014 “Last Days in Vietnam,” Kennedy’s new Netflix production “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” should be required viewing for every student in every film school in the country. Far too many documentarians lack full conviction with their material and frequently attempt to make up for it by injecting bias, manipulated emotion, and forced dramatization into the mix.
To a small degree, Kennedy has done the same thing in a few of her previous efforts, but not in the least here. In “Downfall,” she is dispassionate, concise, ultra-streamlined, and is aware that the proper presentation of the facts will strike such a powerful and resonant chord with audiences that they'll have no choice but to be moved beyond expectation.
2 Crashes in Less Than 5 Months
On Oct. 29, 2018, Lion Air flight 610 left Jakarta, Indonesia, and crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes later, claiming the lives of 189 people, with no survivors. On March 10, 2019, Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 lifted off from Addis Ababa bound for Nairobi, Kenya, and plummeted back to Earth after six minutes in the air at a speed of 500–600 miles per hour, vaporizing every one of its 157 passengers and most of the plane.
In 2017, there were no commercial passenger plane crashes, so having two within less than five months a year later involving the same make and model plane was big news. The planes were both Boeing Max 737s, and the circumstances surrounding both tragedies were practically identical. Without stealing any of Kennedy’s thunder, aeronautical acronyms and terms such as “MCAS,” “TARAM,” and “speed trim” are explained in both technical and layperson detail, which takes up about one-third of the running time.
Within minutes of the film’s start, Kennedy—in tandem with screenwriters Keven McAlester and Mark Bailey—points out just how highly regarded Boeing was, not only within the airline industry, but as a company in general. At any given time prior to 2018, there were 10,000 Boeing planes in operation in over 150 countries.
The Beginning of the End
In 1996, Boeing merged with its principal U.S. competitor, McDonnell-Douglas. As Boeing was top dog at the time, logic would lead one to believe it would be Boeing’s executives who would continue to have the final say in all future decisions, but it didn’t work out that way. McDonnell-Douglas was in second place for a reason: making profits and clearing margins were the priority over innovation, quality, and safety.This mantra, coupled with multiple layoffs of personnel, the relocation of the company headquarters from the founding home base of Seattle to Chicago, and the establishing of a “get-it-done” assembly-line plant in South Carolina led to a landslide level of unfavorable worker morale.
Out of Sequence
Taking the often-dicey choice of a non-linear narrative, Kennedy moves back and forth in time with effortless, seamless ease. Witnessing the results of actions prior to the implementation of the same while still maintaining a high level of suspense isn’t easy. The result is not only an all-encompassing documentary, but also an engrossing suspense thriller. Kennedy never strays far from the human element of the tragedies, yet never employs them for salacious purposes. The interviews with surviving family members are truncated, efficient, and devoid of any orchestrated faux manipulation.Kennedy’s inclusion of talking heads/industry experts is equally, if not more, impressive. Passages including former pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, former Boeing engineer Cynthia Cole, Wall Street Journal writer Andy Pasztor, and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), who spearheaded the tireless congressional investigations of the crashes, are particularly illuminating.
Out of a misplaced desire for profits and an ill-calculated business model, Boeing thoroughly wiped out a half-century’s worth of hard-earned goodwill and glowing customer accolades, something from which it will likely never fully recover.
Kennedy has pulled off the near-impossible. She crafted a film that lays out the facts in a detached, unencumbered manner and forces us, willingly or not, to relate to it in pure, unadulterated, unforced humanitarian terms. It is a supreme triumph on every possible artistic and journalistic level.
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