The Heart of the Game by Grace + No Comments Yet

Continuing the trend of movies about female athletes started with boxing films and Rollergirls last month, I had high hopes for the documentary The Heart of the Game.The film follows a Seattle high school girls' basketball team, the Roosevelt Rough Riders, through seven seasons in the late 1990s and early 2000s, culminating, somewhat expectedly, in a state championship. In specific, it focuses on the team's unlikely coach, tax professor Bill Resler, and its star in the last few years, Darnellia Russel.

In terms of gender, the film does a good job. Even all these years after Title 9, high school girls' sports occupy a precarious position, and are often taken far less seriously than the sports played by boys. It is clear, however, that is not the case with the Roosevelt team, at least not once they start winning. Resler himself gives no indication that he'd prefer to coach boys, or that he'd take boys more seriously. As for the players, it is absolutely clear that they take themselves seriously on the court and consider themselves real basketball players. In the film's best segment, the players meet a 90+ year old woman who coached basketball in the 1920s, when girls were allowed no contact, couldn't dribble more than three times, and wore skirts on the court. It provides for a pretty touching "we've come a long way, baby" moment.

Racially, the movie is a bit more complicated. Darnellia attends the mostly-white Roosevelt High School even though she lives closer to their rival school, the mostly-black Garfield, because her mother thinks her chances of "getting into trouble" will be lower at Roosevelt. It's clear that she's uncomfortable being one of a few black players on her team, but this issue isn't much explored (though it is alluded to). Her close friends are at Garfield, and this doesn't seem to change even though she spends five years at Roosevelt. When the two schools meet up in their grudge games, culminating in the state championship battle, it is hard not to notice that what you are watching is basically a white team versus a black team, and the film makers should have paid more attention to that. The film's biggest flaw is the level to which is backs away from racial analysis of a situation that is clearly racially fraught.

In part, this failure to provide in-depth racial analysis comes from the filmmaker's decision to focus on two character studies (Bill's and Darnellia's), rather than a more comprehensive picture of the team as a whole. The movie starts out seeming to be about the team, and, to a lesser extent, about Bill, but the second half of it is pretty much Darnellia's story, moving from the heartbreaking upset she and the team faced in the playoffs during her junior year and her subsequent dropping out of school, to her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter, her re-enrollment, and finally her fight to be allowed to play a senior season. While this is all interesting, and done respectfully, I would have preferred a more broad-based story.

There are two books that tell very similar stories to this film. The first, Counting Coup, tells the story of a basketball team on an Indian reservation. While it focuses on that teams start, Sharon, as much if not more than The Heart of the Game focuses on Darnellia, it still manages to present a cohesive picture of the rest of the team and the culture in which they are playing, including the numerous racial tensions. The other, In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle is also a more general story, though it all but ignores the racial tension of the New England team it follows. Both would be excellent reads for anybody who likes this movie (and visa versa).

There is nothing offensive about The Heart of the Game, and there are definitely moments of brilliance, but ultimately it says less than I think it could. In terms of both gender and race, the filmmaker shies away from making strong statements or going in-depth, in favor of presenting a feel-good story. Though the viewer is invested in seeing Darnellia be allowed to play basketball her senior year, she is not led to think about the racist and sexist reasons she would be disallowed from playing. This lessens the quality of the film, and is the reason I am giving it three stars rather than four.

Posted by Grace in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders