'42'

Finally Got To See It!

Australia is the land of cricket and vegemite. It's hard to get to see the best baseball movie of the year. I finally got to see it, so here's what I've got you guys.

A lot has been written about the film and a lot of it is mostly true. Yes, Jackie Robinson was a fine upstanding citizen as well as a fine ballplayer to take on the institutional racism within Major League baseball, and this is that story.

My own interest in Branch Rickey comes from a superlative article written about Branch Rickey by Gerald Holland in David Halberstam's 'The Best American Sports Writing of the Century' which goes into the man quite a bit. Some of that material gets picked up in the film.

What's Good About It

Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson is a standout. Not only does he look quite like Robinson, he looks great swinging the bat. The script is concise given so much that is said is like the tip of the cultural iceberg. The directing is also understated and yet has a good deal of flash.

I don't know if this is going to stay in my head a memorable movie like say, 'Bull Durham', but some of the scenes involving Harrison Ford and Chadwick Boseman are really good. Especially the scene where Branch Rickey explains his motivation for trying to push for change.

The CGI Ebbets Field looks good, if a little too pristine. The seamlessness of the period production is great but you get the feeling that cars and objects are just to polished. Still, production design is wonderful and there's a lot of value on screen.

What's Bad About It

Parts of it are a little too earnest and a little too sentimental - Though it's a matter of degree. In some ways it's not a film with a whole lot of philosophical depth, and the topic it is tackling is something that we sort of hope is way behind us in the rear vision mirror.

What's Interesting About It

The performances in this film are a little uneven and I don't think that Harrison Ford does a good job of being Branch Rickey, but there's something intriguing about the guy who brings Jackie Robinson to the Major Leagues, and Ford does a great job of presenting us with a very moral man. The greatest lines for Rickey come in the first act of the film, namely the observation that he's a methodist and Robinson is a methodist, and the admonition that he needs a man with the guts not to fight.

In fact, it's a funny thing about Harrison Ford hat he plays men with moral spine very well, which may explain his long tenure as the big star of the 70s through to the early 90s. Branch Rickey in this film is such a man, and there's nothing swashbuckling about a geriatric cigar-waving General Manager of a baseball team, there are some delightful to-and-fro with the dialogue.

Still, in some ways it's a very bland movie with very little to dissect. It's a film that is totally self-contained with its own meaning and messages. The film is a monument to a very definite moment in time; it's almost an attempt to freeze dry it rigid. As such the narrative never has a moving quality.

The Echoes Of Racism

In historic hindsight, America is a very weird place with its past with racial segregation. It is probably as weird as Australia under the White Australia Policy and South Africa under apartheid. The considerable double-think and cognitive dissonance that accompanied it must have been pretty substantial. It's even weirder when you look at the language used to describe Jackie Robinson's moment going into Major League baseball as "breaking the color line". You'd think that he broke the land speed record.

The film goes into some depth with the quality of prejudice and invective hurled at Robinson. It's ugly and stomach-churning. You wonder where all that energy for hatred and mean-spirited-ness went. I'm pretty sure it got repressed into the subconscious in a way that is thoroughly disturbing.

I Feel Sorry For

Alan Tudyk. Alan Tudyk plays the mean-spirited, nasty, racist, name-calling, abuse- hollering bastard of a manager of the Phillies, Ben Chapman. He's cast against type and he does his best mid-American dingbat hillbilly but he'll always be Hoban 'Wash' Washburn to me, and it just didn't sit right for me to be watching him go on and on with the 'n word'. He's a brave guy for taking on the role.

The Phillies and Pirates come in for a bit of stick - Phillies, and Philadelphia in general for being very resistant to accepting the Dodgers with Jackie Robinson. The Pirates get tick for being, well, from Pittsburgh, which is the running gag in the film.

The Number 42

Of course, the number 42 is also the answer Deepthought gives us as the meaning of life universe and everything - after which they must go and figure out the question. The number 42 just keeps accruing more meaning in the cultural space, with Jackie Robinson as well as this movie about Jackie Robinson; Mariano Rivera is the last Major League Player to be wearing 42, and the series finale of 'Buzz Lightyear Star Command; is '42'; not to mention the band Level 42.

I don't know what all this means, but the numbers 41 and 43 do not have as many references.