McG’s football movie We Are Marshall (2006) is out on DVD!!!
There are three versions of my analysis of this film. The one I wrote in my LiveJournal, the one that includes a lot more analysis about the use of close-up and other formal elements (essentially everything I thought about the film), and the one that is in my thesis. I’m pasting the second version here.
*Warning* I worked very hard on composing and synthesizing these thoughts. If you happen to be inspired or moved and, for academic purposes, would like to consult or quote my words, I would be thrilled—on the condition that you A. email me with your intent (stinahyun AT yahoo.com) and B. let me know which words and for what specific purpose. I will do routine internet searches of phrases in my analysis….if I find that someone has not been following my condition, I will, as Arthur Miller so eloquently put it in the Crucible, come to you in the black of some terrible night and bring with me a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.
Sports Inspirational-Disaster Film: We Are Marshall, “There is a first time for everything.”
Football movies like The Program (David S. Ward, 1993) and Remember the Titans (Boaz Yakin, 2000) may devote a portion of plot and character development to the head coach, but the focus is still on the players having to train and learn to get along with each other. We Are Marshall (McG, 2006) is different. Not only does it contain what Mark Bell of Filmthreat.com calls, “the first assistant and additional coach hiring montage I’ve ever seen in a sports film,” but it also devotes a substantial amount of screen time to its head coach and assistant head coach as they work together and inspire one another. In this respect, We Are Marshall is quite refreshing as a film based on true events.
On November 14, 1970, the citizens of Huntington, West Virginia experienced a life-shattering tragedy that claimed seventy-five members of their community. After losing to the East Carolina University Pirates, the players and coaches of Marshall University’s Thundering Herd, and some of their fans, boarded an airplane that would take them back home—but they never did reach their destination. Everyone aboard that plane would perish in “the worst disaster in the history of college sports,” as Christine Spines notes in her article “A Time to Chill” (Entertainment Weekly Dec. 22, 2006) on Matthew McConaughey, who plays Head Coach Jack Lengyel in the sports inspirational-disaster film We Are Marshall.
Owen Gleiberman writes in his review for Entertainment Weekly (“Fumbled.” Dec. 22, 2006) that McG’s film leaves the audience struggling with “dueling sentimentalities: The film keeps insisting that we mourn for a team we didn’t know, yet the new team assembled by [Jack] Lengyel, who gets the NCAA to bend its rules about whether freshmen can play, is the most colorless of the movie sports squads” (57). Is Gleiberman’s criticism problematic or inapplicable because the film is based on a true story? Does the genre hybrid fail in this case since We Are Marshall is a shadow of a disaster film and a spotlight of a sports inspirational? For whom would We Are Marshall hold the most meaning?
Firstly, the film does not demand that the audience continue to weep for the players who died in that plane crash or for their loved ones. In fact, once the university President decides to keep the program intact for the next season (upon witnessing a display of campus solidarity), the audience hopes the crying and grieving will end so that the program can continue and the sport will have a future at Marshall.
Secondly, We Are Marshall is actually not about the players—it is about the coaches. Specifically, Jack Lengyel and Red Dawson. Identification with the dead players is not expected nor is it desired with the new players. Viewer sympathy and loyalty is still with the Young Thundering Herd because it must be; they are the ones who are on the field performing. In a football movie, the zeal and desire experienced by the audience is generated by the spectacle of game-play. The implications of cinematic editing (the shot-reverse-shots, minimal incorporation of slow-motion, and juxtapositions of various images) creates a sense of suspense that reminded me of what I had felt like watching that Falcons and Bengals game. Only this time, my heart beat increased and my adrenaline flowed because I was uncertain of the outcome of a particular play, as opposed to be being certain of it (I knew the touchdown would happen in the Falcons game). The game-play sequences are the most pronounced sources of narrative tensions. The film lacks the conventional kind of conflict. Is it because of Matthew McConaughey’s performance-as-comic-relief in what would otherwise be a very depressing film? What can be identified as a “conflict” functions as a “threat”—it is man vs. himself, not his physical self, but his spiritual self. It is the inverse of the redemption narrative. There can be no articulation of the belief that there is more to life than football. The myth needs to be rebuilt; there must be a new supply of physical bodies to endure stress, fatigue, and pain.
Against a black screen, a single line of white text reads: This is a true story. Kate Mara’s voice-over functions as exposition, set to aerial footage of the town in which the film takes place. The river, the steel mill, the university.
On the abundance of the close-ups: It could be a mark of McG’s authorial voice, in which case I would have to look at Charlie’s Angels 1 and 2 for not only the frequency of close-ups, but also for when and why it is a close-up. The close-ups in We Are Marshall appear to be unique, or at least implemented on account of the film itself and not any personal choice on McG’s part. The proportion of close-ups to medium shots to long shots in both Charlie’s Angels films is relatively level/even. The changes in shot scale serve practical purposes, such as for pacing and reaction shots from the characters. In We Are Marshall, CU’s of characters’ faces tend to appear in scenes that are emotionally charged.
Most of these scenes involve states of duress. For instance, Annie wants to give the engagement ring back to Chris’s dad, who had bought it for his wife. Chris’s dad insists Annie keep the ring, put it on every day and remember Chris. This conversation takes place at Boone’s diner, where Annie works. Paul sits in his usual booth, which is tagged with a picture of him and his son. Annie walks over to the booth; Paul is sitting on the left (also screen left). Annie is standing in front of the right booth seat. During this exchange, on her attempt to return the ring, the camera cuts back and forth between her and Paul’s faces—in close-up. Annie’s hand trembles as she removes the ring, and the camera films her hands in close-up from a slight low angle perspective. Tears well up in her eyes, and the camera films her face in an extreme close-up to fill the screen with her sadness.
Another series of facial CUs occur between Don and Nate during the school board meeting. In a preceding scene, Don tells the remaining four varsity players about the probable suspension of the football program until it can be rebuilt sometime in the future. Nate realizes that a “suspension” is a mere euphemism for “cancellation.” So, he tells his teammates to round up as many members of the student body as they can and congregate outside the athletic department during the school board meeting. When the meeting commences, Nate steps inside and tells Don, “I think there is something that y’all need to hear…I don’t have anything to say, but they do.” Nate gestures towards the windows. They walk up to it; the camera reveals a massive collection of the student body outside the building. Nate raises his right arm, the crowd begins to chant, “We Are! Marshall!” and repeats it throughout the duration of the scene. Towards the end of the scene, there is a shot-reverse-shot sequence between Don’s and Nate’s faces. The camera films them in close-up, Nate telling Don that continuing the football program “is the right thing to do;” Don telling Nate that there are so many missing parts; Nate suggests, “well you can start with a coach.”
These facial close-ups also take place during scenes of contemplation, comprehension, and other moments when words are ineffective in communicating a character’s state of mind. In the third practice sequence, Red Dawson storms off the field after he reprimands Nate for unnecessary roughness (example of transgressive football violence during a practice). He walks from screen right to screen left as the camera tracks alongside his movements, keeping him at the left foreground of the screen. Red’s face suggests exasperation and hopelessness. When the camera cuts to a CU of a character’s face and there is no talking, it indicates that McG is aware of the power of the close-up. Simultaneously, the incorporation of all the CUs accelerates and strengthens the viewer’s ability and capacity to empathize with the characters and to decipher their facial expressions.
Not all of these expressions are easy to read. For example, when the players and staff of Marshall University are boarding the plane, Red Dawson offers his seat to Hutch, who would otherwise be missing his daughter’s piano recital. Red stands on the ground and looks up at the plane as the stewardess closes the door. The camera cuts back to Red in close-up, and there is a look of what could be sadness or apprehension on his face. But why should there be? He does not know the plane is going to crash. After the plane takes off, the camera goes to the car that Annie and other cheerleaders are in to get home. The camera cuts to a high angle medium close-up as she looks up at the plane (she and the viewer know it is the plane because of sound); her smile soon disappears and registers as sadness. Again why? There is a transition dissolve, her face is framed by a plane window and Chris is looking out of that window.
On why the film features V/O by Annie: Annie’s voice-over carries a voice-of-God tone to it. It is a bit detached or devoid of the emotions and fitting for someone who lost a loved one. This coolness, neutral tone is precisely the point. Or rather, it is not surprising. The V/O speaks as if in recollection and in tribute—it is not about knowing every plot point. It is appropriate for Annie to provide this outside voice. After her fiancé dies, there is no place in her life anymore for football. There is no reason for her to cheer. Annie’s voice-over also accompanies the funeral scene after the crash scene. She says, “clocks ticked but time did not pass,” conveying the mental state of a town shocked and paralyzed by grief.
On the aesthetics of game-play sequences: Conceptually, there could be match-on-action shots, but it is difficult to tell. There is one match-on-action cut in a game sequence in We Are Marshall that unfolds slowly enough for the eyes to process as such a cut. It occurs at the beginning of the Marshall vs. Morehouse State game with a kickoff—the cut is not only match-on-action, but it is also an ellipsis. Morehouse kicks the ball; one of its players catches it. When the ball is in the air before being caught, it is daytime. When it is caught, it is night time. A single editing decision and fifty-eight minutes of game time (through the bottom of the fourth quarter) and approximately three hours of real time have passed. The cutting rate is probably equal or comparable to that of action sequences such as car chases, shootouts, and combat scenes. There is a disorientation effect because the camera cuts from on-field to sidelines to extreme high angle (from stands), and it is a challenge to keep track of where the ball has gone. The shot scale varies too. The game-play is fragmented.
Televised football imagery is comprised of different POVs and shot scale too, but the announcer usually comments upon the image so that the viewer knows who or what is being filmed. And, the game-play is not fragmented. Each play is captured in long take. Field goals are exceptions during the actual play. Regardless of the network (at least between CBS, NBC, and Fox), the field goal attempts are filmed from in front of or behind the kicker—the footage likely from the Skycam or equivalent camera (FOX has what is called a DLP camera). A slow-motion instant replay of a field goal may simply be a slowed down version of the kick, or it could include footage from behind the goal posts as well. The AFC Divisional Playoff Game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Baltimore Ravens on January 13, 2007 at the M&T Stadium in Baltimore and televised on CBS is an excellent example of televised field goal aesthetics because there were no touchdowns in this game. Indianapolis beat Baltimore 15-6 with the Colts’ Adam Vinatieri kicked five field goals and the Ravens’ Matt Stoner kicking two. The documentation of each field goal attempt consisted of a cluster of shots: the Entrance, Preparing to Kick, the Kick, the Reaction, and the Exit. For instance, Whether or not the kicker faces screen left or screen right appears to depend upon the whims of the producer or director in the production truck.
There are three games (including the first one) and three practices. When do they happen and how are they incorporated into the narrative? The first practice takes place after two customers at Boone’s call attention to Annie’s engagement ring. The second practice takes place after Lengyel and Dawson go to West Virginia University to look at their game film. The third practice follows the scene where Nate is soaking in a tub in the locker room and overhears Lengyel talking about the players’ injuries and who may or may not be able to play in the Xavier game. It is in this practice that Nate projects his anger and frustration of knowing he will be benched and of feeling like he let his late teammates down by not leading his new teammates to a victory against Morehouse. A victory at that game would have silenced any and all skeptics regarding whether or not it was a good idea or even the right idea to keep the football program alive at Marshall. The practices follow turning points in the narrative: a new coaching staff is put together and the NCAA allows Marshall to play freshmen; Lengyel and Dawson are ready to implement a new play, called “The Veer,” and WVU let them watch game film; Nate fears and does not want to accept that he may not be playing in their first home game.
While there are many people involved in putting together and maintaining the new Marshall football team, it has to be created from scratch. After volunteering for the new head coaching job, Jack Lengyel from Wooster, Ohio convinces Red Dawson to come back as assistant coach and recruiting specialist; he even manages to cheer the university President to ask the NCAA to allow them to tap into freshmen talent in order to build the new team. We Are Marshall is a coach’s story all right. Gleiberman’s comment on the “colorless” new Herd is valid in the sense that the tensions and personal struggles of the remaining players are perceivably depicted in an obligatory manner. Tom, for instance, chooses not to stay on the varsity team. He explains to Nate that the reason why he was not with the team playing East Carolina and not with them in the plane crash was because he overslept. His survivor’s guilt is too overwhelming, and it is not something he can overcome.
We Are Marshall is about football on the surface and in the subtext. The ideological interpretations that could come out of analyzing the film are still connected to the film’s themes: heart, effort, redemption, self-preservation. Football functions as a punching bag for skeptics and grievers’ displaced or projected anger and pain at having lost loved ones. The film itself employs metaphors verbally and visually to convey ideas and to further the plot. The first two metaphors are connected and recounted in an anecdote Lengyel shares with Don after meeting the remaining varsity team. Lengyel tells a story that culminates in, “I changed my son’s diaper.” Don is confused; Lengyel explains the significance of the event from his wife’s eyes. Lengyel saw the event as unfortunate and unnecessary because his son should not be having bathroom accidents. His wife, however, pointed out that it was the first time Lengyel had cleaned up the mess. Thus, Lengyel emphasizes, “there’s a first time for everything” (vocalized twice by Lengyel and directed to Don regarding Lengyel’s faith that the NCAA will make an exception and let freshmen play football for Marshall). The second metaphor is presented in a basketball court where Lengyel is creating two piles with basketballs, which is a verbal and visual metaphor, a representation of West Virginia University’s twelve recruited players vs. the one that Marshall has. Each basketball represents a player that has signed with WVU. There are twelve clustered together on one side of the middle of the court, and there is one ball on the other side. Lengyel examines this setup and tells Dawson that in order to recruit the number of players they need to rebuild the team; they have to alter their recruiting methods. They must look for players in more places.
Don enters the scene with bad news: the NCAA has rejected every request by letter and has not been returning phone calls. Lengyel asks Don if he is married; “I bet you didn’t propose to your wife over the phone, and I bet she didn’t say yes in a letter.” Lengyel reminds the university president that “there’s a first time for everything.” Don goes to Kansas City to the office of the NCAA and talks to one of the members personally. He returns to Marshall, the basketball court too, and presents Lengyel and Dawson with a letter stamped with “approved.” Instead of saying, “they said yes” or “we got it” or even smiling, Don says, “They changed our diaper,” referencing Lengyel’s mantra that there is a first time for everything. The montage sequence that follows consists of the coaches and assistant coaches “recruit[ing] [freshmen] players from out of town” as well as “players from other sports” within their own school (Bell, Filmthreat.com). A basketball player and a baseball player join as linebackers (as their scenes demonstrate their tackling potential), and a soccer player becomes a kicker.
One political reading that is possible but perhaps a bit of a stretch concerns the scene of the crash. Whatever went wrong in the air with the plane (when it was so close to home) is not shown in the film. One minute the pilot is telling everyone to take their seats again because they will be landing shortly, and the next second (while the camera is still inside the plane filming the forward-facing passengers in a medium shot) a loud CRASH sounds, a bright light shines, and the camera jolts for no more than two seconds. The screen goes black and for five seconds, it is silent. An audio bridge draws the plot to the ground, where each set of the main characters learn of the accident via radio and television. What is interesting about this montage sequence is that the accident is only directly articulated after the images of the crash site. After the screen fades in from black, Red Dawson is at a gas station and the radio mentions the low visibility air (weather) and that there has been another plane crash in West Virginia. The camera films Dawson’s face in close-up, and there is a look of horror on it. The camera then goes to Annie and her friends in the convertible. The only intelligible phrase from the radio transmission regarding the crash is “don’t know the condition of.” The camera then cuts to the movie theatre where Nate and Tom are watching Kelly’s Heroes. The film is stopped and the ticket ripper walks in front of the screen and says to the patrons, “excuse me everybody.” The camera then goes to the living room of the Morehouse family, where Keith the son is watching television. Rolling script on the bottom of the screen reads “stay tuned.” And then it goes to the diner where Paul and Carol (Dawson’s wife) are heading towards the door. Boone answers a phone call, goes silent, and then drops the phone.
The camera cuts back to the movie theatre where everybody in downtown Huntington is pouring out onto the streets. Nate and Tom hitch a ride to the crash site. The scene is chaos, filmed with a shaky camera and period slow-motion. Oddly, visually, it is not unlike some of the game-play imagery: disorienting movements (the seconds after the ball is snapped ~ Nate and Tom running closer to the plane), slow-motion on crucial gestures (fumbles, touchdowns ~ the fireman showing Paul the charred playbook). Only after the crash site scene does the film enunciate directly the tragedy of the crash—via a real news story and some real crash site footage of a black body bag being carried away.
The images of the crash site, filmed with requisite shaky camera and fast-paced cutting parallel, are arguably similar to another plane crash that happened not too long ago in American collective memory—one that incidentally (or ironically) crashed away from its intended destination because a group of its passengers, including an avid rugby player, stormed the cockpit. One could further assert that We Are Marshall references the film United 93 (Paul Greengrass, 2006) in the treatment of the plane’s demise, specifically the moment when the screen goes to black, denoting the occurrence of that unforeseeable tragedy. Greengrass’s film does not have a flash of a bright light accompanied by a loud crash, but it appropriately ends by cutting from a shot of the green earth to the screen going black. It remains black for approximately nine seconds. We Are Marshall essentially begins with such a tragedy. By the end of the film, it becomes apparent—or at least viable enough as an idea—that the real disaster would have been a Marshall University without a football program ever again or even in the near future.
The other aspect of this film I really liked was how the game-play sequences were filmed. Very NFL Films-esque. The slow-motion is used sparingly during the game sequences; thus, when a catch or tackle or line-of-scrimmage-image is shot in slow-motion, the significance of the action on screen becomes more substantial. Invincible, on the other hand, employs the slow-motion frequently, and to the point of dullness, suggesting a lack of imagination or motivation to capture a play in any other way. Yes, NFL Films and Monday Night Football have helped to make slow-motion a staple of filmed football aesthetics, but it should not be the sole choice for presentation when making a football movie. Mark Robert Ellis was the football coordinator and second unit director; he is no stranger to football movies. Aimee McDaniel and Cal Wrenn were the assistant football coordinators. Patrick O’Hara did uncredited football consulting.
Is McG’s experience with action films an asset in depicting the contrast between game and non-game sequences in We Are Marshall? Or in the incorporation of the game sequences into the narrative? I do not recall seeing any television cameras in the diegetic world of the Thundering Herd’s games. The radio is narratively and visually featured more prominently than televisions—other than a couple of scenes where characters are watching TV and they learn of the plane crash. Near the end of the film, what appears to be real footage from televised games is paired with Kate Mara’s v/o of where some of the people did after they left Marshall. Including this footage intact is arguably the most direct and purest way of incorporating televised football aesthetics into the cinematic medium à “Here is the real game; this is how they played.”
For more information on Marshall University’s Thundering Herd, click here.
Pix creds: Yahoo Movies
