What’s real and what is not
Several years ago one of the newspaper cartoons that made me smile was a comment upon a report that British senior citizens were organising a protest march in Whitehall about something or another. It depicted a bunch of examples of said demographic, engaged in its march, holding placards saying things like “Where are we?” and “What are we here for?”
I was reminded of the theme this morning when thinking around my topic of the day and trying to remember whether this website had featured a post or posts upon it previously.
There was a period during which items on ‘top tens’ of different types and genres became prevalent enough that ‘Lists’ became included as a hashtag option for those who were contributing.
Thus I apologise to anyone who can say for certain whether I’m re-treading old ground but – as one of my opponents quipped the last time I played a round of golf – “The great thing about getting old and losing your memory is that you don’t have to worry about getting bored playing the same old courses – whichever one you go to, it feels like it’s the first time you’ve been there …”.
And so to the subject of sports movies.
Although I know I’m venturing onto the hallowed ground normally occupied by Mr Rosen here I do so with a clear conscience partly since I don’t watch many movies these days and anyway the old hard drive memory is a little hazy and partly because I’m approaching my themes in a broad general sense.
Is it possible to make a great sports movie – other, that is, than in the form of a documentary such as Asif Kapadia’s Senna (2010)?
And if it is, what issues and angles have to be addressed and/or ‘coped with’ adequately enough to satisfy the audience?
Plainly a key issue from the viewers’ standpoint, whether they be sports fans or not, is the authenticity of the sporting action featured on screen especially when it is portraying real-life games or events.
Short of, for example, editing in real-life footage of say a Muhammad Ali fight into a dramatic biopic on him, arguably this is an insurmountable problem for two distinct reasons:
Firstly, most onlookers will have come to the piece knowing in advance that the sporting ‘action’ isn’t real (it’s being acted and staged) and almost certainly they’re going to be suspending their ‘lost in the story’ state of mind and switching to one judging on one level or another just how successful the filmmakers have been in making their depiction authentic.
For example, I have never watched Ali – the 2001 biopic starring Will Smith – because, no matter how diligent his research and impression of the great man, no matter how good Smith’s acting was going to be, I knew in my waters that for me he would never match up to the ‘real deal’.
Although I quite enjoyed it I have to admit that, for all its undoubted qualities, Ron Howard’s film 2013 Rush (about the rivalry between Nikki Lauda and James Hunt) also never quite convinced me for the same reason that Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1908) – featuring Robert de Niro as Jake LaMotta, who incidentally turned 96 this week – didn’t. Whilst the actor’s dedication and immersion in their parts was undoubted to be admired, I just couldn’t get by the ‘authenticity’ factor.
The second problem with sporting biopics is that, even with the uninitiated, the audience knows the outcome in advance. For me, the combination of the two is sadly fatal.
Arguably, filmmakers are on safer ground with dramatic stories that happen to feature sporting action, notwithstanding the fact that its believability issue remains.
This Sporting Life (1963), Lindsay Anderson’s realisation of the David Storey novel – starring Richard Harris as a rugby league player – was good enough as a film in itself that the sporting action involved didn’t matter so much.
Tony Richardson’s The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner (1962), story/script by Alan Sillitoe with Tom Courtenay starring worked okay as a dramatic piece but was hampered by the inescapable fact that long distance running is an insufferably boring pastime, the drawback that also did for The Games (1970) – Michael Winner’s lesser movie about four marathon runners at a fictional Rome Olympic Games (starring Michael Crawford, Ryan O’Neal and Charles Aznavour).
Honourable mentions might go to the likes of 1993’s Cool Runnings – directed by John Turteltaub, a comedy piece starring John Candy based upon the Jamaican bobsleigh team’s debut at the 1988 Winter Olympics – and George Roy Hill’s Slapshot (1977), script by Nancy Dowd, starring Paul Newman, about the washed-up coach of a relegation-threatened ice hockey team – but to a degree that is because the sporting action in both was almost incidental to the stories.
Lastly, and briefly returning to boxing, a frequent subject of sporting movies though I’m leaving the Rocky series out of this, even the excellent Million Dollar Baby (2004), Clint Eastwood’s depiction of a female professional boxer – played by Hilary Swank and scripted by Paul Haggis – (which incidentally I much enjoyed) never escaped from the viewers’ fascination with the authenticity issue, a factor which will always weigh down any movie venturing into the world of elite sporting action.
All of which brings me to recommend to Rust readers today the following article by Xan Brooks that appears upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN