THE RIGHT STUFF Philip Kaufman Retrospective

Named the best film of 1983 by Siskel & Ebert, this adaptation of the Tom Wolfe book is that rarest of cinematic birds-an epic with a sense of the absurd. Gleefully cynical about the media circus surrounding NASA’s Project Mercury (listen for the locust-like hum whenever the press corps swarms onscreen), and the political panic behind it (symbolized by a wingtip-wearing Greek chorus), Kaufman’s film is a kind of subversive ode. Distilling the spirit of Wolfe’s book, THE RIGHT STUFF celebrates the high-octane mixture of ambition and courage that motivated the men who lived to “push the outside of the envelope.”