Rez Ball
With both “Unstoppable” and “The Fire Inside” making their world premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival, as well as the world premiere of Sydney Freeland’s “Rez Ball,” it’s fair to say that the inspirational sports movie “inspired by true events” is back, and this time it’s here to stay. This is co written together with “Reservation Dogs” co-creator Sterlin Harjo and is based on the nonfiction book “Canyon Dreams”; which chronicles a basketball season following the Chuska High School Warriors, a New Mexico based state championship winning Navajo Reservation school team.
You know how the film will unfold right from the beginning because of the certain ensemble factors that begin with the teammates’ introductions and their life challenges. First introduced is Nataanii Jackson (Kusem Goodwind), who plays the role of the team’s star, that lost his sister and mother in a drunk driving accident with Lawrence putting her in grief 12 months earlier. Next up is his best friend, Jimmy Holiday (Kauchani Bratt, really cute), who works at a burger place before going to school in order to help his single parent mother gloria (Julia Jones). The last mentioned is Coach Hobbs (Jessica Matten), a promising WNBA star who has returned home after having difficulty in the new stage of her career.
Regardless of how much the season-opening game motivates Nataanii to lead his teammates to glory, the emotions of his deceased relatives remain with him.
His body language is marked, forcing a complete retreat into self so that he becomes invulnerable to attacks. On the court, he is airborne, scoring basket after basket without difficulty. He appears to treat basketball with as much emotion as a native tongue. Away from the court though there is grief, a burden to his personality which distinguishes him from his mates. As if that was not enough, when he does not turn up for their subsequent game, a piece of information comes through which devastates the entire unit. The rates of suicide attempts among the Natives are among the highest in the United States. It looks like this young basketball player has decided to permanently silence his suffering and quit this world.
The audience’s gaze now turns toward Jimmy who was almost an extra in the previous sequences a peculiar, an abrupt shift so Freeland can take us inside the character’s head. This pressure only increases with Josh Hobb’s appointment of Jimmy as the team captain, while having the horrendous job responsible for steering this team through the season and their loss, coach Hobb has to deal with quite a task. She makes sure to include some fun in her team building. On one of the days, she takes them to her granny’s farm where they have to work together to chase the sheep which had gone into the hills back into the pen. It is here where Jimmy starts appreciating certain aspects of the Navajo people such as their language and its significance.
The team, after a string of painful defeats, draws strength and even an upper hand in these customs and gives their plays calling in the language immune to their rival teams. It is Nigel Farmer’s reference to the Nicolas Cage movie ’Windtalkers’ which comes first in the comic pattern of the film. Humor would be needed to keep the audience engrossed while developing several touchy issues on screen and Keith Harjo and Freeland sort of fulfill this need through the use of a husband and a wife-colored commentary who appears to have a ton of frybread gags. The end result is a film that is at once universal but still surprisingly unique.
In the shooting sequences, Freeland shines in shooting basketball, where a slow-motion format is used while the whole team is working together to earn points and liquid camera motion follows the movement of the ball. Such action sequences in the movie are interspersed very well with much of the character development so that the lead performers have to showcase their characters’ trauma, joy and everything else in life that is complicated as we all are. This, however, is not the case with each of the ensemble cast and for some characters they don’t get as much development as warranted in the film. For instance, it is bewildering to find a Hollywood high flyer Amber Midthunder playing a supporting girlfriend role, but she indeed makes every minute of her very limited screen time count.
There is also a difficulty in not being able to knit well enough the threads of the main storylines. The film seems to lose track in around Hobbs for a long time causing a significant loss to the impact it could have had in the final shots of the character. A relationship Jimmy has with the fellow member of the team Krista (Zoey Reyes) who provides language assistance on how to teach Navajo to the team, appears to be more just useful for that story device and only that. The parallel journeys between these two characters, however, are well balanced with that of a father and son.
As he accepts his culture and leadership, she puts down her negative thoughts, works, and goes to Alcoholics Anonymous for help with overcoming alcoholism.
Despite its many structural and narrative shortcomings, “Rez Ball” manages to be uplifting without coming off as patronizing. It has a certain heart and humor that is both detailed and familiar. Most importantly, it is engaging throughout. I am pleased to say that the feel good sports movie revival is getting off well.
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