Finding The Reel Heart Of Sport
The Age
Saturday May 10, 2003
If you're seriously interested in sport, most treatments of it in films and plays are deeply unsatisfying.
Sport's a language of the body, no less than dance, and actors can either perform it or they can't. A famous example of one who could was Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, when he played a boxer cheated of his shot at the title by the mob. The offence to his battered sense of dignity is in his every action, the way he talks, the way he walks, the way he reaches for words that aren't there.
A case where sport and drama didn't mix too well was the mini-series of the Bodyline series made in the '80s. The actor who played English fast bowler Harold Larwood looked like he'd be a useful first change in suburban cricket. His run-up was a bouncy, jaunty hop and jump. Larwood's run-up was like watching an arrow leave a longbow. In it, beauty, menace and speed all became one. Losing that in a re-creation of Larwood is like playing Hamlet with a hoarse throat and only managing the odd word.
In the late '80s, I had the good fortune to spend a couple of hours with soccer player George Best. He'd just read Richard Ellman's biography of Oscar Wilde, another Protestant Irishman of genius with a bent for self-destruction. The conversation turned to films about sport and he told me his two favourites - This Sporting Life and Raging Bull.
This Sporting Life was based on one of a handful of really good novels I've read on sport, written by David Storey. Set in northern England in the '60s, it tells the story of a man trapped inside the game of professional rugby league. In the movie, he was played by Richard Harris, whose performance off the sports field was superb. Skilful editing ensured his performance on the field didn't cause offence to the eye.
Not so long ago, I got out a video from the local store called The Boxer, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Mentioned in the credits for the film was former world featherweight champion, Irishman Barry McGuigan. A Catholic from County Monaghan, McGuigan married a Protestant and insisted that he was fighting for all the people in his community. He had a saying: ``Leave the fighting to me."
To this end, when he fought for the world title in June 1985, neither the Irish tricolour nor the Union Jack was raised in his corner but a blue flag with a white dove symbolising peace. (There is a magnificent documentary that reappears periodically on SBS that is devoted to the song Danny Boy. One of the many interpretations of the ballad it features is one sung by McGuigan's father, a well-known entertainer, in the ring before the world title fight.)
In the film, the character played by Day-Lewis is a former IRA man called Danny Flynn, who comes out of prison seeing no future in the province's sectarian violence. Danny's a boxer, not a great one, but a man who knows his way around the ring.
Day-Lewis trained for the role for three years with Barry McGuigan. The two became close, the actor saying that what was deeply moving to him about McGuigan was ``the tremendous respect he had for the people he was pitted against".
For his part, McGuigan pointed out that most screen violence is totally unrealistic since it only features clean blows. Few blows are landed cleanly.
The result is boxing scenes of rare authenticity that deepen your regard for Danny as a character. He's not a brilliant man, his words are few but they're deeply thought and felt. When he starts a boxing gymnasium that is open to all the kids in the community, Catholic and Protestant, not everyone is pleased. As with all wars, some people have an investment in seeing it continue.
I won't give away the ending of the film, but shortly before it occurs, Danny is grabbed and taken to be executed by one of the factions to the conflict. Day-Lewis's performance culminates not in a word but a single gesture as he prepares for a bullet in the back of the head.
It's the gesture of man who never thought he was much, but decided nonetheless on a certain course of action. If it ended in his death, so be it. He had pitted his small meaning against the general meaninglessness of the world he found himself in because, in the end, that was the only choice he had.
What he portrays is heroism of the most ordinary kind. The Boxer is the best film with a major sporting component I've seen.
© 2003 The Age