Weekly Rant: Missing Links

It’s not unusual for me to be irritated by reviews of Clint Eastwood films. I’ve said it several times now, though perhaps never within the main body of a post here at this blog, that I think Eastwood is the most coddled of directors. Even when his films mostly work, they have a habit of being repetitive, hokey and repulsively on-the-nose, and yet somehow critics rarely give Eastwood’s errors more than a perfunctory aside, usually on the way to another compliment. Even in the case of the sloppy and lackluster Hereafter, which despite some worshipful outliers has been significantly criticized, most of the disdain has been reserved for the screenwriter, Peter Morgan. Rightfully so, in this case, but the larger point still remains: Eastwood gets away with stuff that gets George Lucas and M. Night Shyamalan drawn and quartered.

But this week’s rant isn’t about Eastwood or the kid gloves treatment he tends to receive from critics. It’s about another troublesome trend that I noticed when reading reviews of Hereafter: the tendency to (hyper)link that film to Paul Haggis’ Crash and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Babel. The comparison is by no means out of bounds. Not entirely. All three films feature characters who begin the film unlinked only to have their plot lines overlap by movie’s end, sometimes in (supposedly) profound ways. In an effort to describe that basic phenomenon, it’s a fitting comparison. Trouble is, those so called “hyperlink narratives” are more unalike than they are similar, and observing them as part of one niche genre threatens to obscure what these films are really about, what they’re trying to do.

Man of the People: Fernando Nation

There’s a sports melodrama unfolding in Los Angeles right now that’s so epically sordid, so potentially monumental that I’m half surprised ESPN hasn’t already rebranded its “30 for 30” series as “Thirtysomething for Thirtysomething” just to have the chance to chronicle it with a feature-length documentary. It’s a story of greed, selfishness, corruption and the downfall of a once dominant superpower – the kind of thing that could be directed by Charles Ferguson and aptly titled Inside Job or No End In Sight. It’s the story of the “Dodger Divorce” – the dissolution of the marriage between Frank and Jamie McCourt, for now the co-owners of the Dodgers, whose custody battle for the team has resulted in the public disclosure of their lavish spending at a time when they are also raising the ticket prices of lower-income fans. Fernando Nation, the latest actual entry in the ESPN Films documentary series, isn’t about the “Dodger Divorce” in any specific respect, but in a way it’s an unintentional prologue to it. Because in Cruz Angeles’ profile of the influential career of Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, we witness the birth of the very fan base that might not survive the monetary demands of the current regime. To understand what might be lost in the decade ahead, you must understand what came to be three decades ago. You must understand “Fernandomania.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the movement, “Fernandomania” was a craze roughly similar to the one that baseball fans experienced this past season in relation to Washington Nationals phenom Stephen Strasburg, albeit with several significant differences: (1) Fernando Valenzuela made a mostly anonymous debut prior to his official rookie campaign, whereas Strasburg made a highly-anticipated debut as a mid-season call-up; (2) Valenzuela dominated throughout the 1981 season en route to Rookie of the Year and Cy Young honors, whereas Strasburg lasted 12 starts in 2010 before his rookie year was cut short by injury; (3) Valenzuela joined a Dodgers team that wound up winning the 1981 World Series, whereas Strasburg joined a pitiful Nationals team that finished last in the National League East (again) and called it progress; and (4) Valenzuela was signed by the Dodgers to attract a very specific kind of fan, whereas Strasburg was signed by the Nats to attract any ticket-buyer whatsoever. Of all those differences, it’s that last point that’s most noteworthy, because while it’s easy to assume that the Dodgers have always had a sizable Hispanic fan base, given the large Mexican-American population in and around L.A., Fernando Nation proves otherwise: Before the Dodgers attracted Mexican-American fans, it displaced them – bulldozing their community of modest homes in Chavez Ravine so that Dodger Stadium could be erected there instead. The very franchise that broke the color barrier years earlier by signing Jackie Robinson inspired Mexican-Americans to band together to “Remember Chavez Ravine.” And remember they did. Until Fernando helped them move on.

Days of Thunder: Tim Richmond: To the Limit

“I’m more afraid of being nothing than I am of being hurt.” Officially, those are the words of Cole Trickle, as written by Robert Towne and as delivered by Tom Cruise in the auto racing flick Days of Thunder. In spirit, though, they are the words of Tim Richmond. A fearless driver who became one of the best racers on the NASCAR circuit under the guidance of a crusty crew chief, Richmond was the flamboyant real-life character upon which Cruise’s Trickle was loosely based. But Days of Thunder isn’t Richmond’s story. Not by a long shot. Richmond was confident, talented and brash, and, appropriately enough, he had a Hollywood icon’s sense of the spotlight, but his life wasn’t blessed with the stereotypical Hollywood ending. Just when Richmond was beginning to show his potential for legendary greatness, he died at the age of 34. What killed him wasn’t overconfidence on the racetrack but ignorance off of it. Richmond fell victim to something he didn’t think he needed to fear: sex.

Tim Richmond died of AIDS. And in the impressive documentary Tim Richmond: To the Limit, the latest release in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series, we see the way Richmond lived, the way he died and, most important of all, the way he lived en route to dying. Because what’s really notable about Tim Richmond isn’t that he died of AIDS but when he died of AIDS: 1989. That’s five years pre-Real World: San Francisco, four years pre-Philadelphia, three years pre-Arthur Ashe and two years pre-Magic Johnson. For most of America, 1989 was the dark age of HIV/AIDS awareness – a time when there was just enough light to spot something to fear and not enough light to understand what we should really be afraid of. In the late ‘80s, AIDS was widely considered to be a “gay cancer,” and the great hypocrisy was that some of the same folks who thought only homosexuals got AIDS were also the ones who feared they could contract the disease through casual contact with someone who had it. It wasn’t an environment in which most anyone would feel comfortable living publicly with HIV/AIDS, least of all a NASCAR racer who had already been held at arm’s length by the sport’s “good ol’ boy” establishment just for having an apartment in New York, just for not being one of them.

The Ties That Bind: Once Brothers

Sports uniforms are powerful things. They take people of different races, nationalities, religions, economic backgrounds and political viewpoints and unify them as if members of one harmonious family. They convince fans to cheer for despicable people (Michael Vick in Philadelphia, Barry Bonds in San Francisco, etc.) and to embrace athletes they once despised (Brett Favre in Minnesota). They let Americans know who to care about every Olympics or World Cup. They even create a genuine camaraderie among otherwise dissimilar fans who root for the same set of laundry. But for all the times that uniforms bring people together in previously unthinkable ways (think: Jackie Robinson and the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers), there’s a limit to a uniform’s bond. Once Brothers, the latest installment in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” documentary series, is the story of men who were first united by the blue and white jerseys of Yugoslavia’s national basketball team, only to be torn apart by that country’s civil war.

More specifically, the film is about Vlade Divac and Drazen Petrovic, who were strangers, who became teammates, who became roommates, who became friends, who became standout NBA players, who became estranged. Once brothers, then enemies – their unity through the Yugoslavian national team and their immigrant experiences in America shattered by a war that redefined them according to their Serbian and Croatian roots. It’s a heartbreaking story, one that feels as if it should have been preventable at the same time that it seems utterly unavoidable, and it’s a credit to the filmmaker that we leave the documentary understanding and respecting the emotions and actions of both men. Once Brothers is directed by Michael Tolajian, but it comes from the heart of Divac, who narrates the film while retracing his steps from the quiet Serbian town where he was born, to the gym where the Yugoslavian national team trained, to the hotel in Los Angeles that was his first American home, to the streets of downtown Zagreb in Croatia, where Divac hadn’t set foot since before war broke out in 1991. Other documentaries in the “30 for 30” series have felt deeply personal to the people making them (perhaps most notably The Band That Wouldn’t Die and No Crossover), but no “30 for 30” film does a better job of personalizing the story from the perspective of one of its principal subjects. We don’t just understand Divac’s story, we experience it through him.

Modern Love: Catfish

I don’t need to go to Metacritic to know that many (most?) critics will hold Catfish in contempt. Here’s a movie that uses mysteriousness as both a dramatic device and a marketing campaign (“Don’t let anyone tell you what it is,” the poster warns), so it’s gimmicky. It’s a movie that was made in a shot-on-the-fly documentary style, so it’s lacking in calculated photographic splendor. It’s a movie made by two young filmmakers with no other major releases to their credit, so it’s lacking in auteurist pedigree. It’s also a movie that is quite possibly deceitful and exploitive, and so it’s (perhaps) morally reprehensible, too. In short, Catfish is the kind of movie that so many serious cinephiles will feel duty bound to dismiss as an affront to cinematic artistry, as if calling Catfish “great” would suggest that directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman are the second coming of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It’s a movie that inspires snobbery. And so I might be tempted to dismiss Catfish, too, if I didn’t find it so damn compelling. Gimmicky? Sloppy? Amateurish? Deceitful? Exploitive? Yeah, that sounds like Catfish. But so does this: fascinating and moving.

Catfish crosses genres. It begins as a love story for our times – one that unfolds through text messages, Facebook posts and Photoshopped photographs. It becomes an All the President’s Men-type investigative procedural, with the phone calls and card catalog sorts of Woodward and Bernstein replaced by search engine queries and Google Maps. Catfish then becomes a thriller, as the filmmakers and their principal subject, Nev Schulman, continue their investigative efforts by traveling up a long country driveway to peer through barn windows in the middle of the night. By this point, Catfish has already provided a few mild surprises, but nothing has been especially shocking, and so it’s about now that anyone familiar with the warning on the movie’s poster would be justified in expecting things to take a Blair Witch Project-like turn from (supposed) documentary realism into outlandish drama. But Catfish doesn’t do that, and ultimately that might be the film’s biggest surprise. In the end, this film is almost too real, painfully real, as it leaves those lighter themes behind in order to examine with casual yet gut-wrenching frankness more severe themes of emotional suffering and self-delusion.

The Curse: Four Days In October

One frame. While watching Four Days in October, the latest entry in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” documentary series, that’s how far I got before I rolled my eyes. The trigger for my annoyance was a pair of words that flashed up on the screen in blood red: “The Curse.” No, this isn’t a film about menstruation. It’s about the 2004 American League Championship Series. Which of course means that “The Curse” refers to “The Curse of the Bambino,” which of course refers to the sale of Babe Ruth by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees prior to the 1920 season, the sacrilege of which was so great that it haunted the Red Sox for decades as they went in doomed pursuit of their first World Series title since 1918. Or so the lore goes. The problem with “The Curse,” and the reason it irritates me, is that it’s utter bullshit – less because it fails to accurately explain why the Red Sox went 86 years without a World Series title than because it creates the illusion that Red Sox fans are an especially tortured lot. Hardly. Yes, in a spring-to-autumn race that produces only one big winner each year, the Red Sox were losers for almost nine decades. But in the meantime they did a hell of a lot of winning. Since 1936, for example, the Red Sox have had only 18 losing seasons. In contrast, last Sunday the Pittsburgh Pirates wrapped up their 18th losing season of the past 18 years. That, sports fans, is the kind of suckitude that truly tortured fan bases are made of.

Having said that, there’s no denying that misery and despair were integral components of a Sawks’ fan’s identity circa 2004, back before the Red Sox vanquished their Yankee rivals en route to becoming the very kind of cocky, big-spending franchise that their fans had so long despised. And so it only makes sense that “The Curse” is mentioned as part of the backdrop of the 2004 ALCS, because if any group of sports fans expected to have their hearts broken in the most excruciating fashion possible, it was the one in Boston (and in many other parts of the country where Red Sox fandom was suddenly chic). In baseball’s long history, only one team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a seven-game playoff series, and thus Boston’s four straight wins were an incredible feat all on their own. But part of what made the unprecedented comeback such magical theater was its larger context: 86 years without a title; Red Sox vs. Yankees; Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium; the franchise that always lost and the one that always seemed to win. Director Gary Waksman clearly understands the importance of that context, or else he wouldn’t have opened his film with those two annoying words, but because a 50-minute film provides scant opportunity for prologue, that’s about the extent of Waksman’s ability to set the stage, and so he takes it on faith that these teams and their rivalry need no introduction. Furthermore, he takes it for granted that we’ve heard this story before.

He Drinks Your Milkshake: The Social Network

If Daniel Plainview went to Harvard in 2003 and knew quite a bit about computer coding, he might have invented Facebook. In the least, he’d have been a lot like Mark Zuckerberg, the relentlessly driven and socially ill-equipped antihero at the center of David Fincher’s The Social Network. I’ve already gleaned via Twitter – without reading any proper reviews to this point – that the more popular comparison for the quasi-fictional Zuckerberg is to Charles Foster Kane. And that’s not inappropriate. But as I watched Fincher’s film, the parallel I saw was to the central figure of There Will Be Blood, because both Plainview and Zuckerberg are obsessed with demonstrating their superiority and humiliating their rivals; both are unmotivated by wealth except as an example of their dominance; both treat anything short of full obedience as an insult; both exhibit a paranoia about the world around them even while they steadfastly believe, and repeatedly confirm, that they are without suitable rivals; and both fail to realize that their greatest antagonist is the man in the mirror. So much did Zuckerberg remind me of Plainview, despite a physique that’s considerably more Eli Sunday, that when Zuckerberg finds himself in a verbal confrontation with a business partner who discovers he’s been cheated out of a considerable fortune because he underestimated his Harvard chum’s deviousness, I half expected Zuckerberg to respond, “Drrrrrraaaaaaaainage!”

To call Fincher’s film a scathing portrait of Facebook’s founder is to put it lightly. Zuckerberg’s offenses are far more numerous than what I’ve described. Zuckerberg’s core problem is that he’s as arrogant as he is insecure, and thus he’s constantly lashing out at people – aggressively or passively, overtly or surreptitiously – because he’s positive he’s better than they are and he’s just as sure they don’t know it. Over the course of The Social Network we are given numerous possible motivations for Zuckerberg’s behavior – that he wants to get back at a girl who dumped him; that he wants to humiliate those who were born into good fortune (financial or physical); that he wants to be popular; that he wants to have control – but the origins of Zuckerberg’s need for superiority are irrelevant. What’s significant is that Zuckerberg is incapable of relating to the world in any other way. There are numerous times in which Zuckerberg clearly understands that he has hurt someone, and maybe even grasps that he has acted inappropriately, but he can’t bring himself to change because his insecurity is so severe that the only way he survives is by regarding everyone around him as inferior. And in that way, Zuckerberg is also something of a sympathetic figure, because in his desire for recognition and acceptance he builds a club so exclusive that he’s the only one qualified to be a member.