We Are Marshall. We Will Survive. Eventually We'll Thrive
Written: Jan 10 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: intense, emotional, never forgets it's both a football movie and about the grieving process
Cons: absolutely none
The Bottom Line: We Are Marshall never once hits a false note.
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| quasar's Full Review: We Are Marshall |
On November 14, 1970, a plane carrying 75 members of the Marshall University football team, its coaches, its broadcasters, and its boosters landed in a fiery crash as the team returned from a game. Parents. Sons. Brothers. Friends. All gone in an instant. The town of Huntington, West Virginia was devastated. So was the team.
All but four players - gone. How could they field a team? How could they even think about fielding a team? With a strict NCAA rule against playing freshmen on a varsity squad, recruiting on its own won't help. Besides, it's not just the lack of players. What about the memories? The university feels they have no choice but to suspend the program. One of the returning players has other ideas.
Nate Ruffin (Anthony Mackie) believes that his dead teammates entrusted him with their legacy, that it was his responsibility, no his sacred duty to honor them by playing hs heart out on the field. When he's told there won't be football next year, he refuses to accept the news. He organizes the entire student body on the triangle outside the trustee's meeting and lets them prove his point. The game is on. First order of business: find a coach.
No one wants the job, though. No one, that is, except College of Wooster coach Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey). A bit of a hot dog, Lengyel nevertheless takes coaching seriously. He also takes grief seriously and understands so many of the conflicting dynamics underlying his new team. Part guru, part priest, part showman, and part brash yokel, Lengyel is just what the doctor ordered. He seems to catalyze everyone else around him, bring them back to the living one step at a time. It's a hard road, one with many pitfalls, but he seems to deeply understand the necessity of taking the path.
We Are Marshall never forgets that it's a football movie, but it also never forgets that there's a lot more to life than football. It's a movie about grieving, about moving on, about wallowing in the unfairness, about guilt, about uniting behind something bigger than yourself. It's a movie that examines how we deal with tragedy, examines the many different ways different people react to the same terrible stimuli, examines the various ways we can define victory. Winning is the only thing except when it's not.
In telling this story, We Are Marshall never once hits a false note. It balances its competing needs perfectly, sending us on a fast and furious ride through the ups and downs of an emotional roller coaster. Everyone involved really got it, got why the story was important and the various levels that together combine to make it so very intense. It's a masterful movie that tells a powerful story with a deft hand. The filmmakers show an almost ruthless ability to wring every last drop of emotion from each scene, every character. It's almost unrelenting; even when you're laughing (which doesn't happen often) there's something there adding a poignant undertone. By the end of the movie I was so drained I could hardly move but I wouldn't have missed a single second of the experience. Go see it for yourself.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Serious Movie
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
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