One reason I mostly stick to 5-star reviews is that, okay, look what happens if I have things to say about the Legend of Bagger Vance instead. Here's this film, came out three years ago. A lot of you, like me at the time, had no interest in seeing a film about golfers in the 1930s Deep South. Those of you who saw it, given that the film was only a middling success, have had lots of time to forget about it. And here I am writing to say that I'm completely indifferent as to whether you go back and watch it or not?!?
But it's not quite that simple. I enjoyed the Legend of Bagger Vance, certainly more than I enjoyed the newer 3-star-worthy releases I've seen lately (Igby Goes Down or, although I might watch it again sometime and understand/like it better, Full Frontal). Bagger Vance, to me, is a 5-star rendering of a 1-star idea, and it deserves real praise for the rendering.
The Old South settings of upper-class Savannah are rendered sumptuously but with unusual accuracy for movies: from the clothing to the decor to the au-courant hats and attitudes of the visiting reporters. The lighting is stark and dramatic when it needs to be, and generous otherwise. The actors are superb: I particularly like Charlize Theron's fusion (as the heiress Adele Ivergordon) of Scarlett O'Hara's uppity faux-demureness with the more direct abrasive banter of Katharine Hepburn. Matt Damon as Invergordon's long-lost beau Rannulph Junnuh is as snide and dissolute as Damon can manage; which means only moderately, but Damon's native aw-shuckness makes Junnuh easier to like. Will Smith has made it clear to me that he trails only Robin Williams (and rates ahead of Yoda) as Hollywood's worthiest Swami. The narrations, by Jack Lemmon, are efficient. The dialogue may or may not resemble real human beings -- let's not even discuss the phonetic misspelling "Rannulph" -- but is properly suited to the dignity of characters in fables. Which is exactly what Bagger Vance is, a modern fable. Some of my favorite movies are fables.
Which means, for example, that I was ready to love the setup. Ms. Invergordon, left with an inheritance of a superb newly-completed golf course and immense Depression-based debt, decides to invite the world's two leading golfers to stage a promotional tournament for a prize of $10,000 (well into six figures in today's money): all the money she has left. That, of course, is perfect for a myth, the last desperate gamble to attain something great, when all the accountants want her to sell the land for scrap. She invites Bobby Jones to play, and persuades him by telling that the other top golfer in the world, Walter Hagen, will be playing. She persuades Hagen to play by telling him that Jones will.
That's step 2, the display of chutzpah: again, righteous legend fodder. If the gods lie and cheat and steal, as the Norse and Greek and Old Testament gods did, why can't Charlize Theron, who's way cuter anyhow? Our current God just sits back and waits for Oral Roberts to lie, and the only people making good movies about Him are disrespectful bastards like Kevin Smith. There's a lesson in that, and scriptwriter Jeremy Leven (whose novel Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kessler, J.S.P.S. is funny and deep and wonderful and has a cool orgy scene) learned it long since.
We encounter a plot-logic flaw here. To stir up local interest and attention and money, Adele wants a golfer from Savannah itself. That's where Junnuh comes in: until World War I, he was (1) the most promising teenage golfer on the circuit, and (2) Adele's cute boyfriend. He disappeared ten years ago, so naturally the young-boy character (who grows up to be narrator Jack Lemmon) has no difficulty whatsoever finding Junnuh at a local bar.
Sex appeal is directly flaunted by Adele as a method of manipulation, and Junnuh agrees to play. He has, however, not golfed since WWI, and this is the 1930's. Naturally, he sucks. Then Will Smith shows up as caddy Bagger Vance and decides to show Junnuh how to play again. Will is as effervescently smart-aleck as you could ask: his fee is $5 guaranteed. "But as caddy, you'd be entitled to 10% of my winnings", Junnuh reminds him; "Right now, I'd feel better with the five bucks", Vance replies, good-naturedly enough.
Eventually, the golf tournament ensues. You can stop reading if I'm heading into Too Much Information territory, because my serious problems with the movie start with the golf game.
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First of all, though televised golf is boring, golf itself needn't be. I should have deduced this through my fondness for miniature golf, but I was raised on the lower edge of the middle class, used to quips about golf being "a good walk, spoiled". I didn't challenge them until reading two novels by Troon McAllister: the Green and the Foursome (a _golf_ foursome, you ninny). The motivating character of both novels is a skilled, charming con-man whose medium is golf. His method is the patient, hard-working mastery of deeply difficult, improbable shots: how to shoot 75 yards from a bunker, or 45 yards from the same bunker, how to drive a ball the exact distance needed to carry past a river, how to prepare for oddly tilting greens. He views the best courses as being ones that standard golfers hate: tricky ones where small errors lead to disastrous fates. In sequel the Foursome, he uses his home-designed course to teach some heroic (nay, mythic) moral lessons to some men who need them, and I think it works wonderfully, as playful as it is deeply serious. The Green, however, is a loving tribute to golf as a battle of wits, effort, strategy and cunning. It is about learning and misdirection. How could anyone not love a game like that?
The Legend of Bagger Vance is about a talented jerkoff who's ignored his rich, beatiful girlfriend and his golf game for a decade. Because he's played by Matt Damon, and because his caddy is the guy in the movie's title, we know that this will _not_ be a movie about the importance of not being a jerkoff, right? Obviously, he's going to have to give Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen -- two real-life great golfers -- a run for their money, right? And furthermore, because that's how Hollywood works, he's going to have to come from behind, meaning that the two best full-time hard-working golfers in the world are going to have to be outplayed by Rannulph Junnuh for the last three 18-hole rounds of the tournament. I won't tell you who wins, but I will tell you how insulted I am that we're supposed to care; maybe that doesn't really help.
How does he start to catch up? Well, first of all -- this is the smaller complaint -- he's not far behind in the first place. We see dramatic botched shot after botched shot by Junnuh in the first round. Then we find out he's behind the best golfers in the world by a mere 12 strokes after 18 holes. Ahem: no he's not. We saw him. He's behind the local golf instructor by 12 strokes, maybe. But onward...
Will Smith's secret, as the caddy, is to focus on clearing out Junnuh's mental cobwebs. "Golf is a game that can't be won, only played", he assures Junnuh to reduce the pressure of, er, trying to win. "Inside every one of us is our one, natural, authentic swing. Your must find your one true swing", Smith assures him. And Junnuh looks under his right lung, and he looks in behind his wristbone, and he checks the dark regions of his lower intestine where he's always leaving his keys, and... well! Somewhere he finds his one true authentic swing. Luckily, Bobby and Walter are using some swings they charged from Nieman-Marcus or something, and Will Smith's one natural authentic swing slowly reduces the gap.
And this is just pure crap; such pure, natural, authentic American crap. Will Smith is fabulous in the role, mind you: charismatic and intense and focused, absolutely qualified to sell me on any idea that isn't total hokum. Believing in one authentic natural swing is the same gag Ayn Rand pulls in the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but at least she's honest enough to admit that some people are more talented than others, and that she's basically happy if the less talented 99% of us are tossed into death camps where we won't get in Howard Roark's way. Believing in one authentic natural swing is the same hooey a bright teenager will use as an excuse to spend all of classtime jabbering away at classmates who otherwise might study; it's the same excuse he'll still be using for relying on monthly checks from his parents when he's 30, while working on a novel that isn't quite ready to show anyone, or on art that's just too experimental for the masses to appreciate yet.
"Practice, practice, practice" is, I guess, one of Troon McAllister's lessons. But the thing is, his con-man golfer is having loads of fun. Glenn Gould's piano concertos offended critics and annoyed fans, yet obviously entertained Glenn Gould (and some converts) quite a bit, precisely because Gould practiced enough that his strange interpretations could be brought to life. I don't get to be a rock star because, unlike Gould, I usually skipped piano practice. The pleasure I do get from writing, however, is because I have _not_ spent the last ten years drinking a lot while refusing to write, and therefore I can usually say what I mean to. Any margin by which Jeremy Leven used to write better than I do (a huge bleedin' margin) is because he used his immense talent to write a lot.
Now he occasionally does a screenplay based on someone else's novel. I don't doubt he's sincere, even authentic about it. I don't begrudge him all the help he got from Bagger Vance's able cast and crew. But I wish he'd stop taking long searches inside himself, and start pounding out ideas at his keyboard every day until he resumed typing ones that deserve to stick.
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