I'll be first to admit I have a complicated relationship with football. I'm not a fan, per se. I'll watch a game when it's on. I have some teams that I like more than other teams. (I will neither confirm nor deny that there may or may not be a New York Giants pennant on my bedroom wall.) I love Superbowl Day. But if you asked me, right this very minute, which teams are in the lead to get to the Superbowl, I couldn't tell you. Most of the time when my dad watches a game, I'm working on a blog post or playing on my DS instead of watching. I can't name the quarterback of every team in the NFL. I certainly can't name the coaches or the averages. Don't even ask me who won the Superbowl last year, I can't remember. I don't dislike football, I just have too many other interests to follow it closely.
But...
When I was a kid, Monday was my favorite day of the week. Why? Because every Monday night the TV would be on, the last moments of whatever inane sitcom was popular that season would be ticking away, and my dad and I would be standing in the middle of the living room, eagerly awaiting the start of Monday Night Football. As soon as the clock hit 8, the Hank Williams Jr theme song would begin and we'd party like it was the last night on earth. I still remember being small enough for my dad to pick me up and hold me while we danced, bouncing me in time to the music. I remember how on the nights that the Dallas Cowboys played, I'd put on my cheerleader uniform, a gift from my dad's family, while waiting for the song to start. I remember jumping up and down hard enough to shake the pictures on the walls, while my mom laughed and mock-scolded us, "Stop it! You'll break the floors!"
So for me, football is more of a childhood memory than anything else. My dad teaching me to throw a football, rooting for the Giants against the Patriots while working on my first algebra assignments, going to my first local football game with a construction-paper pennant that my dad helped me make, unwrapping that Dallas Cowboy cheerleader uniform on my eighth birthday. That's what I think of when I think football. Who wins or loses, that doesn't really matter to me. Just the part where I got to bond with my dad, that's all I care about now and it's all I cared about then. (Guess who went with me to see Concussion tonight? If you guessed my dad...ding ding ding, we have a winner!) So I can understand why people love football, but not why people worship it. And I certainly can't understand why it's worth dying for, or worth letting other people die for it. But then again, Concussion isn't really about the sport of football.
There seems to be a theme among the Oscar candidates this year: injustice. In some of the most brilliant films of the year (Spotlight, Trumbo, Suffragette, and Bridge of Spies come to mind), the catalyst of the film is injustice, and what happens to those who try to fight it. Concussion continues in this vein by setting us up with a protagonist we can't help but like, giving him a cause we can't help but support (I don't know about you, but I'm all for keeping people from dying), and showing in full, heart-wrenching detail what happens when he's met with heavy opposition. Sure, it's a familiar story, but there's something about a good person on a crusade against injustice that works with an audience, and Concussion uses that fact to its advantage, with surprisingly strong results.
So let's get the first, most obvious issue with Concussion out of the way first: yes, it is a typical story, and yes, it does hit all the "right" notes. And yes, there are moments of triumph for the hero, and it is very, very male-heavy--not going on my list of feminist films anytime, this one--but it does get major props for casting, which I'll get to in a minute. And yeah, there are a few nice little doses of "gee, isn't America great!"/every-country-looks-up-to-America-style patriotism thrown in. Ah, the genre conventions are strong with this one...but with that said, if you don't already know the story behind it, the ending is a bit of a surprise, because...well, spoiler alert, there isn't really an ending, not in the traditional sense, and certainly not compared to, say, Spotlight, which ends with the story breaking and the newspaper hotlines lighting up with victims' stories. In most of the Oscar nominees this year it ends with a ticker-tape parade of excitement as the silence is broken, the injustice is confronted, and the heroes are victorious.
That isn't so much the case with Concussion. Yes, Dr. Omalu gets to publish his research in a medical journal, and he does finally get to speak to the players and the victims' families, but it's not a triumph on the level of Suffragette--I think we all know how that ends--because, as the post-film title cards reveal, it took years before the NFL would even openly acknowledge the link between concussions and long-term brain damage, much less do anything about it. Hell, the very last shot of the film has Dr. Omalu watching a football practice just as things heat up, implying (and rightly so) that the sport will continue to thrive in its dangerous form, even though progress has been made. It's a quieter ending, one that doesn't trumpet the "look how well-rewarded you'll be if you do the right thing!" cliché, and takes the Bridge of Spies tack of "you will know what you did, even if it takes everyone else forever and a day to recognize the significance of it." That alone tames the roar of the genre conventions and gives Concussion a very well-deserved somber undertone.
So now let's talk character development for a minute. When we first meet Bennet Omalu, he's testifying in court on behalf of a man convicted of murder and sentenced to death. He's asked about his qualifications and lists an impressive resume, so we know he's smart...but more than that, he's a nice guy. He's taking time out of what we soon discover is a fairly busy schedule just so he can save a man's life--and not a personal friend of his, mind you, but a man he doesn't know from Adam. Later, we see him go to his coroner job, where his first act of the day is to--I swear I'm not making this up, see the movie if you don't believe me--politely greet the dead body he is about to examine. If at this point you are not half in love with this character, I don't know what to tell you.
But as the film goes on it gets even better. He goes to church, which is usually used as a cheap way to mark a character as "good" or "bad," and on his way out he's asked to take in a homeless woman, fresh from Kenya, and of course he does. He knows something is wrong with Mike Webster, so he pays for the tests on the brain himself. Throughout his fight for the concussion victims, his mantra is "Tell the truth!" After his research is published and the football fans dogpile him, Omalu's boss asks him, "Did you think they'd send you a thank-you note?" and Omalu emphatically replies, "Yes!" He's not thinking in terms of fame, or money, or even professional recognition. He just wants to save lives, and he can't understand why the NFL corporate heads aren't with him on that mission. It's not the naïve innocence of a typical plucky hero, it's a combination of sincerity, compassion and, in Omalu's own words, common sense. And it's a cliché, sure, but honestly, I can't remember the last time I saw a Christian character in a mainstream film like this actually act like a Christian.
For anyone who doesn't know, I can't stand Will Smith. I really can't. Usually I will actively go out of my way to avoid seeing his films. He's right up there with Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell on my list of actors I'd rather eat liver than watch. But five minutes into the film, I swear to Pete I forgot that I was watching Will Smith. I have never, ever seen a Will Smith movie and forgot even for a second that I was watching an Official Will Smith Movie, but when I saw Concussion, I wasn't seeing a Will Smith Movie, I was seeing...well, a movie that just happened to star Will Smith. If he keeps this up, I may have to toss him onto the Jim Carrey list of actors I consistently (and wrongly) underestimate. Ditto for Alec Baldwin, another actor I'll usually avoid. He usually plays the same character. In this film, I assure you, fellow Baldwin-doubters, he does not reach into his usual bag of tricks and actually manages to portray Dr. Julian Bailes sympathetically and, more important, believably.
But what I loved more than anything else about Concussion was the way the film pointed out, on multiple occasions, that neither Dr. Bennet Omalu or, presumably, the filmmakers hate football. The people on Bennet Omalu's side of the argument don't hate the NFL. They just genuinely can't understand why the NFL doesn't want to protect their most valuable employees. And that, to me, is the heart and soul of the movie. Omalu repeatedly talks about America as a land of opportunity and freedom, and when he risks his professional credibility and personal success to stand up for those who can't (or, in this case, didn't know they needed to) stand up for themselves, he is doing what he can to protect that freedom...but of course, those who oppose him can't understand that. It's a frustrating and all too realistic problem, and the fact that it actually happened makes the film painful to watch. But it's worth it. It's so worth it. Because like every other movie that's come out this year about fighting injustice, Concussion carries a message of hope, and a call to action. Nothing will change, unless we stand behind the people who, like Dr. Omalu, just want things to be better.
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