42 - Part I

Saw *42 this morning. I'm going to give a quick review here, so skip until the break if you plan on seeing it. It was a good movie, not great. The actors with the major roles were good (Nicole Beharie was an excellent casting choice), but minor characters had the best acting jobs. Guy who played Leo Durocher was great. Guy who played Ben Chapman was really good too. The script held things back from the film, though. I thought the movie was a bit soft, and most sportswriters whose reviews I read shared that sentiment.
 


Historical accuracy is always going to be an issue with such films, and *42 was no exception. I obviously wasn't around in 1947, but I know enough about history (through reading about Robinson and talking to people who were around then) to say that Robinson endured far worse from the baseball world than what was depicted in the movie. It made no sense to me that first utterance of the racial epithet didn't come until 15 minutes into the movie. It was even more common among white people then than it is among rappers now.

I want to throw in a "don't believe me, just watch"...but that'd require a link to one of those KKK docs on The History Channel.

Speaking of, those are tame in a relative sense as well. They have to do it for TV, though; and the same is/was true for 42. That movie would have easily gotten an 'R' rating if it were truly accurate. That wasn't going to happen for one two-part reason: the movie had to be sold to a white audience, a large part of which does not want to accept the fact that such ugliness runs in its ancestry.

I'm not going to go off on a rant...yet. That will come after the break.

What I will do before I move on is talk about the best scene in the movie (and it's unanimous from what I've read). After Jackie has a particularly bad AB he goes into the tunnel behind dugout and takes his frustrations out on his bat and the tunnel walls. Branch meets him in the dugout, showing him both the compassion and tough love that Jackie needed at the time. As most people reading this know, baseball is a game that has three central themes: timing, failure, and adjustment. This is the only part of the movie that deals with all three at once.

The movie was a fairy tale version of what really happened, for the most part. I think it was a good "generalist" film, though. The average person (read: someone who's not a particular fan of baseball nor a stickler toward history) will take more away from the film than I did. All that said, I did enjoy the film. I would see it again under the right circumstances. Not sure I would/will buy the DVD...but there are a lot of good movies which I haven't bought DVDs for. It is absolutely worth seeing, for both what it provides and what it omits. 

Alright, now for the break...actually, I think I'll save the rant. I'll save it until...now.