It’s tempting to claim the 1994 film Blue Sky is really two films uncomfortably squeezing their way into what is, in the end, a mess. Film “A” is a bonkers drama about suffocated, child-like-sex-bomb, Carly Marshall (Jessica Lange). Housewife, and mother of two teen girls, she wanders through the early 1960s believing she was once a movie star, or maybe she will be someday. She also seems to believe she is the third daughter of her husband, Hank (Tommy Lee Jones), whom she has pet-named “daddy.” After moving to a less glamorous locale, she throws an outrageous fit involving stealing the family car to run away. Hank insists on loving this nutcase, even though his nomadic career as an army nuclear weapons researcher causes these insane tantrums upon every mandated relocation. That brings us to film “B.” Hank Marshall is steadily coaxing the military into taking its nuclear tests underground. This project, entitled Blue Sky, would theoretically decrease the radiation and pollution levels released into the air by bombs and missiles. After a test seriously injures a pair of Nevada cowboys at the test site, the military opts for covering it up, though Hank objects. Unable to ignore the accident, Hank seeks justice, and is thrown in jail by the armed forces he serves. If not for Carly being caught in an affair with a base commander (the always slyly evil Powers Boothe) back in Virginia, these wildly different stories would have no connection at all.
There are worse problems to have. The whole film certainly provides plenty of dramatic action and plot. The children disapprove of, and are embarrassed by, their mother’s antics, though they try to understand and love her. I was interested in all of these desperate conflicts, but I was mostly interested in seeing them in separate movies. Thematically, they do nothing to reinforce each other, and the two-films-as-one wind up feeling a little ridiculous once the girls choose to go on a road trip to save Hank. From then on, the tone, once delicately serious, swerves into Disneyland, and crashes into an odd, “Hey, so what if the military is run by fascists!? Everything will be better in California!” storybook ending. You would think there would be some emotional consequences after your commanding officers illegally sedated you in a government conspiracy, but apparently not. Sure, he quits the army, but that just doesn’t feel like enough of an arc for a story with such a traumatic life event.
Jessica Lange won an academy award for her performance, and that is certainly merited. Her relationship with her daughters and her husband is every bit as strange as it might sound, and watching her work this bizarre character through a lusty labyrinth that is as much a coming-of-age story as it is a mid-life crisis is impressive and entertaining. That only makes the film that much more frustrating, as we try to understand how these children could possible be the mostly grounded and responsible young people they are, and how Tommy Lee Jones’ character could allow this woman to mother his kids. There is some evidence, here and there in dialogue, to suggest she has been this crazy their whole lives. There is no evidence, anywhere in the film, to suggest how this family actually functions. When she has her new-move-freak-out, they talk about it “starting again,” but to the audience, it seems to be happening for the first time. How did they not see this coming? Why didn’t they take some measures to ease her transition… measures beyond singing songs from old Dixie in the car ride to their new home? Who are these people?
The score might have helped the film make sense of its challenging conflicts and tone, but it really isn’t doing the movie any favors. There was an inexplicable trend in the early ’90s, among even the more accomplished score composers, to make a kind of meandering electric blues guitar the centerpiece for their musical storytelling. I believe you can call up that sound in your mind if you think about it for a moment. It was everywhere, especially in comedies (think Ace Ventura), spreading like a virus in contemporary cinema. It killed a lot of moods in those days, and it certainly killed them in Blue Sky. It had plenty of committing this tonal homicide, and try as Jessica Lange might to make this movie work, she needed help from any other filmmaking aspect to do so.
