National Geographic’s Sally takes a deeper look at the historic accomplishments and hardship in the life of astronaut Sally Ride.
Throughout history there are people that become famous for doing something so extraordinary that people can’t stop talking about it. In 1983, Sally Ride boarded the Challenger to become the first American female to go to space. To the world she was a trailblazer who broke through the glass ceiling at NASA, but to those closest to Ride they just saw the unstoppable human being that they all knew and loved that was on a mission to show the world that this shouldn’t be as uncommon as they were making it out to be. In National Geographic’s latest documentary Sally, we get to see that side of the astronaut that not many knew of and learn about what was happening in her life surrounding the events of her historic flight.
Directed by Cristina Costantini (Karol G: Tomorrow Was Beautiful), this documentary explores the early life of Ride and focuses on her relationships over the years while she slowly became the most talked about person in the world in the early 1980’s. We see Ride as an athletic teenager who loved to play tennis and was a curious, determined student. She had a strong desire to be a professional tennis player until she started college, where she discovered her love of physics. She ended up at Stanford University and continued to follow her newfound passion for physics and science until she saw an ad stating that NASA was looking for female astronauts for the first time ever.
Deeper than space.
Even though Sally’s rise to fame took place in the late 1970’s and the early 1980’s, her story and her commentary of what happened feel like they’re set in present day. Throughout the documentary, Ride is spoken down to by the men at NASA, spoken to like she’s not capable of being emotionally strong enough by the press, and constantly told how amazing it is that a woman is going to space. To her, it wasn’t a good thing that the world was so amazed and shocked by the idea of her being an astronaut. Sally proves repeatedly how capable (or more capable in most cases) she is compared to her male counterparts and is still treated as less than the male astronauts.
What surprising about this documentary is how dark and sad it gets. Ride was part of a graduating class from NASA; part of which she served with on the Challenger’s first mission, the other half of the group being the astronauts who tragically lost their lives in the second Challenger’s accident in 1986. This broke Ride, causing her to step away from NASA and join the investigative committee looking into NASA to find out what went wrong. Shortly after, the doc covers her tragic battle with cancer. After seeing Ride’s tenacity and athleticism throughout her whole life and career, it was absolutely heartbreaking to see her slowly lose that.
Lost love.
However, the most tragic part of Ride’s story was what this documentary was really about.When she was young and in her tennis playing years, Ride met the person who would end up being the most important person in the world to her; author Tam O’Shaughnessy. The two became friends and stayed in touch through college and through the height of Ride’s NASA journey. Due to the notion of two people of the same sex in love being too much for most of the world to handle at the time, Ride and O’Shaughnessy remained friends. They both married men and blended into the rest of society, but they could both tell that they were more than just friends.
No matter how much they wanted to show the world their love, they were constantly reminded that the world was not ready to accept them. Sally uses tennis legend Billie Jean King explaining her sexuality causing her to lose everything as an example. Of all her accomplishments, both personally and professionally, the world didn’t find out her most personal one until they read her obituary which revealed that O’Shaughnessy and Ride were together for decades. The pain of losing her friends on the Challenger was hard enough, but the fact that she couldn’t share her true love with the world due to the high probability of her losing everything she had accomplished is the most tragic part of her story.
The bottom line.
Going into this documentary, I knew next to nothing about Sally Ride (I had only heard her name in the game The Last of Us being admired by Ellie). I was very much engaged in the story and I loved how Sally was put together. The mix of archival footage, reenactments, and interviews with Ride and O’Shaughnessy were so beneficial to the story. The decision to focus on the human being instead of her achievements in NASA was a brilliant decision by the director and made the documentary so much more impactful. This is the kind of documentary that makes the subject someone that kids and young adults can strive to be like and be inspired by instead of just recounting a time in history.
Sally screened as part of the Provincetown Film Festival and is now streaming on Disney+. Watch the trailer here.
Images courtesy of National Geographic. Read more articles by Tyler Carlsen here.
MOVIE RATING
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Sally - 8/10
8/10
From a young age, Tyler has been amazed by filmmaking and writing. When he’s not watching movies in theaters, he also enjoys playing video games and binging one of the numerous shows he’s watching at any given moment. Working with The Young Folks was a highlight of his writing career and he is looking forward to this new adventure with In Between Drafts!
