I've never been great with collision sports. I never wanted to play them because I'm well-attuned to my own pain thank you very much. Some kids love it, but I never wanted to do it. Yeah, I'm wimpy that way - but I'll have you know my brain is intact.
It's amazing how collision sports forms the backbone of national identity in anglophone countries. There's Rugby in the UK with its component nations, South Africa, New Zealand, and then there's Australia where there are two varieties and Australian Rules. There are the two north American varieties of "Football" which are nothing like the beautiful game, both of which feature helmets and protectors and people colliding at great speed. If you speak English, you're in for a sport where people crash into one another over a bit of inflated pigskin.
Perhaps then it took a total outsider to the anglophone culture to pierce the veil of denial surrounding collision sports. This film shows what it all looks like from an outsider's eyes.
What's Good About It
For quite an explosive topic, the film is very stately and careful. It goes a long way towards telling the story of the doctor who discovered CTE, and not going for the sensational angle in the spotlight. The ramifications of the findings are frightening enough, so the film leads you through the chain of events that led to the discovery and disclosure.
It's nice watching a straight up drama. Nobody pulls a gun, nobody drives like a maniac through traffic lights, nobody ducks and takes cover in a hail of bullets, nobody goes to court to make a big speech, nobody leaps into action to do something impossible. It'll told in a very direct, human dimension, and you're grateful for it when you watch it. Will Smith, Alec Baldwin and the rest of the cast put in very controlled, subtle performances.
It's a good film; It's not a great work of cinema, but it's an important film that communicates the discovery of the problem.
What's Bad About It
It's so understated that it gets a little like a telemovie in parts. We get that Dr. Bennet Omalu's private life and professionalize found themselves at a complex juncture, but some of it just eats screen time and doesn't tell us how the NFL is responding.
It's probably the choice of the director not to go too much into the NFL's response to the findings, but it feels a little too balanced towards Dr. Omalu's life. It's a big story so they could have gone for just how large the story is. Instead there's a muted quality to that critical interaction.
It's not bad as such but it is dissatisfying in the context of a very well made film.
What's Interesting About It
The most interesting aspect of the film remains its central subject matter, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Perhaps it's better to have the real doctor discuss this.
Omalu told Fairfax he has watched AFL and NRL on satellite television: "My impression? Those sports remind me of the gladiatorial sports in ancient Rome." Given heavy body contact is a feature of both codes, he categorises them similarly to American football.
Omalu's opinion is that no one under the age of 18 should play games without rules that forbid all manner of heavy knocks that can culminate, over time, in brain damage. His position is based on the scientifically proven fact that brains remain unformed until that age.
"Papers that came out this month alone, scientific papers, have shown that if you suffer one concussion, just one, as a child, that you are about 16 times more likely to commit suicide as an adult," he said.
"Papers that have come out last year have shown that, as a child, the younger you are when you begin to suffer exposure to brain trauma – with or without concussions – the greater the likelihood that you cannot attain your God-given intellectual capacity."So that's probably where the discussion should start.
CTE is described as having a strangling effect on the human brain. A by-product of repeated head and body blows, it is caused by a build-up of a protein named tau that essentially overtakes healthy cells.
If you look at these collision sports with a fresh eye, it's actually quite disturbing how often you see full-paced collision with people's heads being flung in all kinds of directions. We've known about boxers getting brain degenerative diseases after retirement for many years, perhaps headlined by Muhammed Ali and his Parkinson's Disease. It stands to reason that if you are taking concussion damage on a regular basis for many years, it manifests itself as brain disease.
The most important image might the avocado stone in a glass jar sloshing around in water that Will Smith's Dr. Omalu uses to show us what a brain is, under concussion. He shakes it hard to show the avocado stone slosh and smash into the jar at both ends. It may actually be the world's least surprising diagnosis.
The Joy Of Biff (In The English Speaking World)
The thing is, these collision sports hold such a sacred spot in the culture the anglophone world. It's a real badge honour to have played these games growing up. If you keep playing them as an adult, it's sort of like an extra badge of manhood and masculinity. We judge certain players negatively if we perceive them to be "tackle-shy", which only underlines how much value we place in taking part in the collision aspect of these games.
We value the contact, we love gratuitous bouts of "the biff", we admire the tough men who can run around for 80-odd minutes and inflict this as much as they can take it. If the Super Bowl is the highest rating television event in the USA, it is mirrored by the NRL State of Origin in Australia, and the Rugby World Cup is certainly a festival of hard collisions on the field. It's ingrained into our culture, like some baked-in ingredient of our worldview. Speak English? Expect to understand the beauty of collision sports.
Against that context, this doctor sure has thrown a cultural bomb. As much as I find identity politics passé, it's hard to imagine an anglophone culture denied of its collision sports, or certainly what remains of the the collision sport if the collisions were taken out. It isn't just the football fields of the world that is going to be affected by this understanding.
The CTE diagnosis and spreading understanding has moved to other sports. Major League Baseball changed the rules to do with catchers covering home plate - collisions are to be avoided, and there are now strict rules on where a catcher can position himself. Jorge Posada was moved off from catching in his last season because it was deemed he hashed one too many concussion episodes colliding at home plate. Concussion is turning out to be a serious complication in the administration over collision and contact sports.
This is a far cry from Rivaldo taking a dive clutching his face. And we hold Rivaldo and soccer players who dive in contempt exactly because it's so ingrained in us that players of these collision sports are so damn tough.
You can understand why the NFL resisted the findings as much as it is portrayed in the film. Subsequent studies are finding the phenomenon is quite widespread. 96% of former NFL players have CTE. It's not going to "get better". If one plays a collision sport, one is putting oneself directly at risk of getting brain trauma injury; and that being the case, there really isn't good future with these sports. The NRL's position on CTE for instance is guarded and defensive. Some think the clubs are in denial. Not surprising given the amount of mirth the sport enjoyed around Mario Fenech getting concussed during his career.
The AFL isn't doing much better. The ARU is noticeably silent on the issue. Elsewhere, they're finding the same problems with retired NHL hockey players. Even soccer players are coming to light with their header plays, as being significantly at risk. The diagnosis of Lou Gehrig having had ALS (a.k.a "Lou Gehrig's Disease") is beginning to look doubtful. People have conjectured that it might have been the multiple concussions Gehrig received playing in the days without a batting helmet.
Given what we know today, if I had kids, I wouldn't let them near collision sports, except as a spectator. If enough people - and parents at that - took my view, the future of these sports is doomed.