Although
losing may offer greater opportunity for contemplation and instruction and may
more closely resemble the conditions of life itself, the sports movie generally
deals in uplift and inspiration, often translated as victory over ostensibly
insurmountable obstacles. Even those films that tell a sad story, like Pride of the Yankees or The Babe Ruth Story, employ the language
and imagery of nobility and triumph. Most, however, like Rocky or Hoosiers or The Natural or Field of Dreams or The Bad
News Bears or, appropriately, National
Velvet, appeal to the common human desire for resolution, redemption, and
happy endings.
Based on a runaway bestseller, and a
true story at that, Seabiscuit, if
one believes the publicity and the press, will probably win a trifecta of
Academy Award nominations. A large, expansive work crammed with characters and
stories, connected to a remarkable decade, the movie comprehends something of
its time and place, the America of the Great Depression, in its account of an
unlikely horse who became a great champion, capturing the imagination of an
exhausted and dispirited people. Its retelling of an important history, its
real characters, and its brilliant filming enliven a story that despite its
veracity, still seems the invention of some Hollywood hack of an earlier era.
Accompanied by a number of
voiceovers and a sort of chorus in the form of a manic radio sportscaster, the
picture shows how the lives of three variously damaged men converged around a
race horse. A wealthy automobile dealer, Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges) a
gifted, reticent trainer, Tom Smith (Chris Cooper), and an angry, embittered
jockey, Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire), all of them damaged in one way or another,
make themselves whole through their devotion to a misunderstood and maltreated
thoroughbred. Despite his small size and difficult nature, the horse also
impresses all three men with his ability and above all, with his heart, the
courage and determination that enable him to win against bigger, stronger
competitors.
Although the picture never explains
much about the character of Smith, it portrays the painful life of the jockey
in great detail. Unemployed and impoverished in the Depression, Smith’s parents
abandon him to a kind of indentured servitude as a jockey, a profession he
follows without much success in provincial racetracks around the country. The
trainer recognizes a fire in the unhappy youth that matches the fierceness in
Seabiscuit; putting the two together creates the right combination to turn them
both into winners.
Howard, the wealthy owner, suffers
the tragic loss of his only child, a sorrow that only begins to abate with his
commitment to the horse and the jockey, who becomes a kind of surrogate son. He
comes to believe so strongly in the abilities of both that he challenges the
owner of the greatest thoroughbred in America, War Admiral, to a special
two-horse race. The exploits of both horses, widely reported in the media of
the day, especially through the relatively new technology of radio
broadcasting, capture the imagination of a suffering people, who naturally
sympathize with the underdog Seabiscuit.
The movie proceeds through a
succession of races and preparations for races, as the three men work to turn
the abused and neglected horse into a champion racer, transforming themselves
in the process, healing their own wounds, learning something about courage and
intensity from the fierce nature of the animal. The filming of those races
displays the inventiveness and artistry of contemporary cinematography at its
best, placing the camera (and the audience) right in the middle of the pack of
galloping horses, suggesting the speed, confusion, and danger of the sport and
the terrific skill of the riders. Contrasting with the energy and excitement of
the races themselves, the most striking purely visual moments in the film
actually occur in virtual silence — an early morning at the track in
Saratoga, as a horse emerges from the fog, a gallop through the autumnal
countryside against a background of hills and woods and turning leaves, some
lovely and ironic establishing shots of the grand houses of the rich in a time
of economic disaster and shocking poverty.
Through the narration of the
historian David McCullough, a number of still photographs, the familiar
newspaper headlines of 1930s movies, newsreels, and the nutty radio announcer
(William H. Macy), the picture attempts to suggest the context in which Seabiscuit
raced, the conditions that made the horse a national figure. The inefficiency
of the technique, along with the literal and labored back story, slows the
movie down, and oddly, also underlines the neglect of a number of other issues
that dominated the time — gangsterism, J. Edgar Hoover and Al Capone, the
rise of Fascism, the troubling possibility of an impending world war. The
beloved underdog of history and sports cinema may have distracted the nation
for a while from its many problems, but the inspirational story also masked
other troubling realities in the failures of the economic and social system:
Seabiscuit raced and won, but many of the people lost.
Seabiscuit, starring Tobey Maguire,
Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Banks, Gary Stevens, William H. Macy,
Michael O’Neill, Annie Corley, Michael Angarano, Dyllan Christopher, Eddie
Jones, David McCullough; based on the book by Laura Hillenbrand; written for the
screen and directed by Gary Ross. Cinemark Tinseltown; Hoyts Greece Ridge;
Loews Webster; Pittsford Plaza Cinema; Regal Culver Ridge; Regal Eastview;
Regal Henrietta.
This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2003.
