I am told that my late grandfather, Gerald C.
Horne Sr., played for the St. Louis Stars of the Negro
Baseball league, and I have no reason to doubt this since Hall
of Fame baseball player James 'Cool Papa' Bell, my
grandfather's teammate, often came to my grandparents house
for dinner. This was the early seventies and I was just
a real little boy at the time so the fact that this legendary
baseball player was sitting at our dinner table eating food
I'm sure was meant for me, meant very little at the time, but
those old men could tell some stories of the road, I tell
you. Such as when Mr. Bell told us my grandpa was
so slow, that if the ball stayed in the park that more than
likely he'd be thrown out at first base, to which gramps
pointed out that's why the ball rarely stayed in the
park. They also told me stories about one Jack Roosevelt
Robinson, among other legends, my grandfather long since
retired before Mr. Robinson showed up but Mr. Bell played with
him, even coached him. Those were good stories and it
was a good time to be six years old. This brings us to
the Warner Brothers biopic '42' which tells the story of
Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier of Major League
baseball. Chances are if you are over thirty and have
even a remote knowledge of baseball, '42' isn't telling you
anything about the man or the time or the story that you don't
already know, but that being said, Brian Helgeland's film
still plays all the right notes at the right time and makes
for a fine tribute to both Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey.
Brooklyn Dodger owner Branch Rickey
(Harrison Ford), seeing neither black nor white, only green,
has come to the conclusion that Black people like baseball too
and they would probably come to his stadium in greater numbers
if there was a black player on his team. Seems logical
to me. So against the advice of pretty much everybody on
the planet Earth, Mr. Rickey has chosen this time in American
history to set about integrating Major League
Baseball. His choice, a fiery young
shortstop playing for the Kansas City Monarchs, Jackie
Robinson (Chadwick Boseman). Jackie's first order of
business upon hearing this news, ask his fiance Rachel (the
stunning Nicole Beharie) to marry him, now it's off to spring
training in Florida to hang out with the Dodgers farm team,
the Montreal Royals, to experience some quality racism.
From there the film follows Robinson's almost
other-worldly play as a minor leaguer, chronicled by writer
Wendell Smith (Andre Holland) who Rickey assigned to Robinson
to more-or-less babysit, until he's eventually called to the
majors where the real fun starts.
So a few of the Dodgers take up a petition as they don't want
to play with him, there are numerous death threats, on the
field once the internal disruptions were suppressed, bean
balls, high spikes, bad calls from umpires and name calling
will be the order of the day. But with a steely resolve
that few people possess and fewer could ever understand, the
backing of an unwavering owner and the love of a good woman,
history tells us that Jackie Robinson will persevere.
Now if only in the year 2013 we could convince black kids to
start playing baseball again.
Now don't get me wrong. '42' is a very good movie, maybe
even a great movie on many levels. The film possesses
everything I imagine one would want from a historical
biography in that we have a majestic, larger than life central
figure, played with class and aplomb by Chadwick Boseman, a
driven axis of change in Branch Rickey expertly played by
Harrison Ford with Han Solo completely settled in to playing
old men now, and this majestic character is given a solid
support system in the characters wonderfully played by both
Nicole Beharie and Andre Holland. The look of the film
was great, perfectly capturing the era, the on-field play,
what little there was in this baseball movie, felt authentic
and you don't need me to tell you that this in important story
that deserves a retelling. It's almost perfect.
And I guess therein lies my problem with this otherwise very
fine film, in that everything felt so perfect and neat, which
I imagine is necessary for a movie like this to make it
palatable and digestible for a mass audience, when the reality
was a lot tougher and uglier. Chadwick Boseman did his
very best to humanize Jackie Robinson, but the character he
was given was more of a challenged saint than a distressed,
three dimensional human being. And I do believe that
even the Huxtables would be a little bit envious of the
marriage of Jackie and Rachel Robinson as it was portrayed
here. As I mentioned earlier, everything plays out at
the right note at just the right time which did make the movie
somewhat sterile. Even the racism, as there is a scene
where Ben Chapman, the manager of the Phillies, was completely
out of line in his verbal abuse of Robinson but this scene was
played by actor Alan Tudyk and Tudyk is an actor with certain
sense of charm and humor, which he brought this scene, which
defused the impact of the scene just a little bit.
Racist Alan Tudyk is almost a racist you can hang out
with. To the film's defense, I read an interview where
this was the desired effect the filmmaker's where going for,
to humanize racism, which is why all of this is nothing more
than one man's opinion.
This is no insult but I think '42' plays like a kid's
movie. It takes difficult things and makes them simple,
and it handles this in a way that's entertaining as well as
being educational. That's not easy. Personally, I
probably would've have preferred a tougher movie, but the
movie that we got is darn near irresistible, that I can't
deny.
