"Moneyball" is a Story of Faith

During the first half of the first decade of the 21^st century, I watched a lot of baseball, mostly Yankees, mostly -- OK, practically all -- in bars, and once or twice at the old Yankee Stadium.  There was even a point when, after working late every night (at some point, of course, one must acknowledge that those are the hours, it’s no longer “working late” if you do it every day), I would walk into a bar where far too many people knew my name, and if the Yankees were losing, they’d turn it around and win.  If I went home and didn’t watch the game, the Yankees would lose.  Clearly the deciding factor was me-- if the Yankees lost, it was my fault.  Just ask my friend Dave.

Baseball can do that to you.  It’s a very superstitious game.  Ask Billy Beane.

The second post-season game between the New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers crackled on my car radio Sunday, the Connecticut station’s signal straining to reach the south shore of Long Island.  When I arrived at my destination, I searched for the game on television.  I was on vacation, and I needed a walk along the shore I’d driven more than two hours to reach.  But it’s impossible to turn away, since the Yankees might do what they indeed did:  They galvanized, too late, in the 9^th, so we believed we could win it. 

Here in the post-season, “Moneyball” tackles difficult questions about the game of baseball.  Is the way to pick your team to go one by one and find the best individuals out there, potential stars; or is it the time of the computer and math nerds who will use statistical analysis to pick a group of players who will function as a quirky sort of whole, without stars?  I am not an aficionado of baseball (or any other sport), so I’ll not pontificate on that subject.

(c) 2011 Sony Pictures

However, “Moneyball” is a movie, a sports movie, an end-of summer movie.  Like the game of baseball itself, the film moves along at a leisurely pace in its beginning — in 2001, the rich teams poach the stars from the poor Oakland Athletics (NY took Giambi, Boston Johnny Damon, St. Louis took Isringhausen) and we watch General Manager Billy Beane, a former player himself, try to rebuild a new team.  Like this hot-weather game, the film’s rhythms start off lazy, gradually warm, and move forward in the summer breeze, speeding up until the audience is ready to leap out of their seats, as if they were at a neck-and-neck play-off game.  Rather like the last inning of the Yankees/Detroit post-season game 2.

Brad Pitt eases into the role of Billy Beane, his fit body showing an athlete’s grace despite Billy’s 44 years -- that’s practically proof that his time as a professional athlete was limited.  He appears in no way crippled.  One of Billy's stops looking for new blood for his depleted team is Cleveland, where Reed Diamond plays some guy who mispronounces Shapiro (his name is pronounced with a long I unlike any Shapiro I've ever known).  Diamond is smug as the mean-spirited alpha guy in a roomful of mean-spirited man-boy sports types.  It looks rather like the Sopranos in pinstripes.  The roomful of aging jocks are as one in their deprecation of Billy, who handles it all with aplomb.

Jonah Hill as "Peter Brand"  (c) 2011 SonyPictures

The most important thing that happened in Cleveland was that Billy was smart enough to spot an anomaly, a young guy in his father’s suit that all those ex-jocks -- guys who would have pushed that math nerd fat boy's head into the toilet in high school -- actually listen to the young man’s whispered counsel.  This is Yale-educated economics geek Peter Brand, quietly played by Jonah Hill.  This is the subtlest performance I’ve seen Hill give, and I like it. 

Philip Seymour Hoffman is slow, pugnacious, and really obnoxious as Coach Art Howe, who ignores and belittles Billy’s plans for his odd new hires, until his hand is forced.  I assume Howe happily took the credit for the wins generated by Billy and Pete’s non-traditional, outlandish team-building plan.  Hoffman is brilliant as Howe without pulling focus from the story.

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Coach Howe

Women don’t play much of a role in this world.  The traditional scouts judged a ball player not only on his own prowess and appearance, but on the prettiness of his wife.  If she’s merely average or less, they say, the player lacks confidence, so he’s in the discard pile.  I’m stating this politely, which they did not.

In terms of this story, Robin Wright is on the mark yet wasted as Sharon, Billy’s ex-wife; Kerry Dorsey is sweet as his daughter Casey, with an even sweeter singing voice and a 21^st century style.  A female sports reporter is a total bitch when she’s in the enemy territory of the clubhouse -- the testosterone presumably nauseated her.  Yes, it’s a boys’ club.  Nevertheless, though Billy’s secretary has little to do, Takayo Fischer does it with the fullness of a life story behind her character.

Does anyone care about the rotten attitude toward women in this story, or do we just expect and accept this petrified belief system from jocks?  Does high school never end? 

Not that this antipathy toward the female of the species diverts from the story.  It sneaks up on you, “Moneyball” does, just like baseball.  I had the advantage of not remembering the 2001-2002 baseball season.  For me, the suspense and excitement of “Moneyball” built as the crew of guys without star power but rather oddball qualities, metamorphosed into the amazing team that won twenty games in a row.  Cheers of joy flutter through the NY audience at the magical possibilities of baseball.  Who could ask for more?  Billy Beane, that’s who, because he knows that, no matter how brilliant the season, if you lose the last game, the season is forgotten.

Luckily for baseball fans and moviegoers, Michael Lewis didn’t let that happen when he wrote his book, Moneyball:  The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, which Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin translated into a screenplay (based on a story idea by Stan Ghervin) for a very satisfying baseball film.  The underdog wins, at least for a while.  That’s baseball.  That’s America.  Creating a team of oddball castoff players, using math and computers and modern economic theories was an incredibly ballsy move — if you’ll forgive the pun — for Billy Beane and Peter Brand (that’s the character name, not the real guy’s name) that should keep them in the record books for a good long time.

Director Bennett Miller does a fine job, keeping even the leisurely parts of the story moving swiftly.  Attention never flags.  Pitt’s Billy Beane is cute and charming and passionate and superstitious and totally believable.  We are with him all the way as he drives this film, and Jonah Hill is a quiet but rock-solid co-pilot. 

Pitt and Hill

Stephen Bishop gives a standout performance as David Justice, an angry 30-something traded from the Yankees to the badlands of Oakland.  Chris Pratt does sensitive work as Scott Hatteburg, a young yet washed-up catcher Billy wants on first base.

Arliss Howard gives a quirky performance as John Henry, the new owner of the 2002 Boston Red Sox.  His is one of two particularly odd but utterly believable performances in this film — Howard as a part of baseball, and Spike Jonze as the rather effete current husband of Billy’s ex-wife, whose tentative kindness shows a complete lack of understanding of baseball, or any other sport. 

“Moneyball” is a film that makes people applaud.  Baseball is still the great American pastime, and early autumn does not diminish our love for the boys of summer.

~ Molly Matera, signing off to go watch some kids play -- I hear the crack of a ball on a wooden bat…

The Tree of Life is not your typical summer movie

The advertisements for Terrence Malick’s new film,“The Tree of Life,” smacked of “Art” with a capital “A,” which is not encouragement for me to see a film.  In the past, I’ve felt there was something amiss if I didn’t enjoy “Art” films, that messages that the filmmaker had put out there in plain sight went right over my head.  So it was with some apprehension that I joined a small audience for a late afternoon showing.  Everyone was quiet — it felt respectful, like the hush of people who were chatting a moment ago, but now they’re in church.  Throughout the film’s 139 minutes, we were all careful about making noise with our popcorn or slurping our soda.  When it was over, I sat watching the credits, but before the door closed on a departing woman I heard her say, “What was that?  I mean it was beautiful, but what was it?”  Not a wayward response, but probably not Mr. Malick’s ideal.

Terrence Malick wrote and directed “The Tree of Life,” which is more beautiful than I can comprehend.  It not only gives us a family, a truthful, flawed, confused, questing family, living in the 1950s and 1960s south; it goes beyond human history into the birth of the universe.  To ask questions, to ask why, apparently requires Mr. Malick to go back to the beginning of time, and show us where the world came from, how life started, how we got here.  Although I may not understand why, I’m rather glad, since what Mr. Malick has given us is an extraordinary combination of images, light and dark, movement and sound, to which he added ordinary yet interesting human beings.  The history of the world, the history of a family.  All presumably to answer whispered questions of faith. 

Laramie Eppler, Jessica Chastain, and Hunter McCracken.  (c) 2011 Fox Searchlight/Merie Wallace

In the opening we meet Jessica Chastain playing Mrs. O’Brien as she receives a telegram at the front door of her upscale suburban house.  We are immediately aware someone has died and something inside Mrs. O’Brien has therefore broken.  She telephones someone, it is Brad Pitt as Mr. O’Brien, and he too breaks down, differently.  In an entirely separate time and place of glittering tall buildings we see Sean Penn.  I had no idea who he was.  I had no idea who started whispering.  Sometimes I thought it was Mrs. O’Brien, who seemed to be the person of faith.  Other times I assumed it was one of the three O’Brien sons.  The whispering goes on throughout the film, starting with wondering: Since the son of the O’Briens has always been in the hands of God, why is that son dead?  The whispering voice tells us that it is his brother who has died at the age of 19.  We gradually realize which of these three boys died young and brought about this contemplation, but nothing is free in this film.

The O’Brien family’s story is touching, powerfully written, performed and photographed.  The evocation of 1950s suburban Texas is lulling as a summer breeze — you can smell the dusty streets, the dew, you marvel at how simple and pretty everything was.  And then the trucks spraying DDT drive through the idyllic neighborhood, and children play in it.  Appearances can be deceiving.  The O’Briens are typical and appear happy, but there is dissension, there are moments of fear, moments of hatred, moments of withdrawal.  On the other hand, there were moments when I felt I had to work too hard to understand what was going on, when we were, where we were, who we were.  Scenes of family life — contentment and discord — are mixed with whispered biblical references, simple scenes of nature contrasted with the grandeur of spiral swirls of stained glass. 

Brad Pitt does gorgeous work as Mr. O’Brien, the dad.  This is a strong and sensitive performance of a disappointed man — from a young man marveling at the birth of his son, aging as he tries to teach his children, tries to excel, tries to meet his own expectations, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing.  His own crises come, bringing harsh impact to his family, yet still he keeps our sympathy.  Hunter McCracken was intense and heartbreakingly real as young Jack in the throes of adolescence.  We felt his pain, we were furious with him, we loved him.  Jessica Chastain is a revelation as Mrs. O’Brien, living this woman’s life from early joys through years of conflict to tragedy.  The two younger sons were played sweetly by Laramie Eppler as the middle son, R.L., always benevolent, patient with his elder brother, as if he understood the displacement his birth caused even while a young child; Tye Sheridan played the youngest son Steve with a gentleness, fragility on some occasions, exuberance in others.  All three boys were totally believable — as was the toddler playing the young Jack discovering, when R.L. is born, a world in which he is no longer its center.  Fiona Shaw drops in a few times as “Grandmother” — whose mother she is was unclear, but I’d guess she was Mr. O’Brien’s mother.  Mr. Malick’s direction of the children in particular was marvelous, the several young boys who played the three O’Brien sons, as well as Jack’s friends in the neighborhood.  The scenes of those difficult years, of Jack’s rebellion, Jack’s uncertainty, Jack’s hating of what he was doing despite the need to do it, these were revelatory scenes of coming of age.  I believe Sean Penn as the grown-up eldest son, Jack, performed a function of tying the film together from beginning to end, but I freely admit I did not understand the ending, the where, the when, the how, who’s dead, who’s alive.  I just didn’t know for certain.  I don’t necessarily need to know to enjoy the film, but I expect that will be a frustration for many. 

The cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki is a triumph — it is compelling, moving, beautiful, and finally edited with respect and rhythm by the five-man editing team credited:  Hank Corwin, Jay Rabinowitz, Daniel Rezende, Billy Weber, and Mark Yoshikawa.  Additionally, the scoring by Alexandre Desplat was sometimes glorious, sometimes sweet, always right on.

Don’t have a coffee before you go, don’t have a drink.  Just go into the darkness and accept whatever comes.  And don’t ask me what happens at the end.  I don’t know what Mr. Malick wanted me to hear, to see, to feel.  No matter — I may have missed many of his points, but I was thoroughly involved in and intrigued by the lives of the O’Briens, as well as the creation of the world, which was terrifying and exhilarating.  Visually transcendent and augmented with deep work done by Brad Pitt and Hunter McCracken and the happy introduction (at least to me) of the radiant Jessica Chastain, this film is well worth your time.  I’m glad I listened to my friends and went to see it despite my forebodings that it might be Art.  Which, by the way, it is.

~ Molly Matera, signing off …. In case you wondered, this is not your typical summer movie….