New film in theaters
“The next goal wins”
Director: Taika Waititi
Screenplay: Taika Waititi, Iain Morris
Photography: Lachlan Milne
Osades: Michael Fassbender, Oscar Kightley, Kimana, David Fane, Rachel House, Will Arnett jt
Taika Waititi’s new comedy tells the true story of the American Samoan soccer team, whose national and sporting pride is ruined by the biggest defeat in the history of international soccer, when they lost 31-0 to Australia in the 2001 World Cup qualifier Ten years later, Thomas Rongen, a failed, embittered coach in personal crisis, played by Michael Fassbender, comes to the rescue, losing his job in the United States and being sent to work in American Samoa. , which he reluctantly accepts as his only job opportunity.
The film opens with a strangely exaggerated and possessive scene in which director Waititi himself introduces the film as a priest-narrator, followed by farce’a tendentious introduction to the American Samoa football team, which makes the viewer understand how terrible the team from the small island in Oceania is, but may arouse a bit of concern in the most demanding viewer. Fortunately, the negative atmosphere disappears quite quickly and the train returns to the tracks of a more humane, character-oriented and sincere joke.
Rongen has three weeks to convince the defenseless amateur athletes to play something similar to soccer, get them fit enough to play soccer for 90 minutes at a time and hone their game to meet the task assigned by the American Samoa Soccer Association: scoring a goal.
“The next goal wins” Author/source: Film image
The arrogant new coach, whose character is also marked by a serious alcohol problem, spends the beginning of the film in the role of a so-called land fish and gets to know the customs of life on a tropical island, where tradition plays a strong role, attitude to life is alien to Rongen in his kindness and benevolence, came from the world of hypercapitalism and cult of progress due to its small size, for example, the president of the football federation runs a restaurant, where they work even the players of the team, not as a second job, but as a third job. The training begins with difficulty, because the otherwise good-faithful and cheerful members of the team are not particularly enthusiastic about the white immigrant at first, they perceive his indifferent attitude and his harsh and humiliating coaching style turns out to be worse than expected in the tropics.
If, in a certain sense, the film can be considered a classic sports film in which the outcasts exceed expectations, the sporting element is more like a frame or a spine, within or above which the characters can give results. In the end, the technical side of football remains superficial and borders on montage at its most extreme, where Rongen passionately draws circles and arrows on the white board with a marker.
How the Samoans became a team that to a certain extent also knew how to play is not clear from the crazy chaos. At the same time, perhaps a slightly more perverse football science could have helped fill some gaps, which remain a bit shuddering after the film, and make Fassbender more credible even in his role, when he chose it, perhaps too much concentration based about his Hollywood resemblance to the character’s real-life counterpart. This is why one would say that the centrality of the characters makes the film more cheerful street movie‘ks where the vehicle is an unfortunate football team, within which the characters develop as they get to know each other.
“The next goal wins” Author/source: Film image
The structure of the film is positive, because the film’s tonal blend of humor and tragedy does not allow us to be sure of the final outcome of the climax, the first World Cup qualifier with Tonga, and this uncertainty plays out until the end. Thankfully, Rongen’s character’s greatest and most important tragedy is also left for the end of the film, when the man finally redeems himself. He left much more space for what was happening on screen and effectively created the context around what only happened next. Otherwise he would have weighed too much on the neck of history and emotions.
The American Samoa national team generally acts as a single character in the story, but notable among them is Jaiyah, originally the team’s striker and later heroic captain and center back, who is currently going through a hormone-assisted gender transition and is being treated as an undisputed equals in the traditionally toxic and hypermasculine football context. However, upon arrival, Rongen has some doubts and, somewhat flattered, tells Jaiyah, who is late for training, that he doesn’t know where the women’s team’s training takes place.
Although Rongen and Jaiyah, who is increasingly reconciled with himself and others, later create a strong emotional bond and become an effective couple who maximizes the team’s hopes, Rongen initially pushes him away, and when attitude problems of Jaiyah on the field finally overwhelm the coach, as a last resort he uses his gender identity against the player and calls the trans woman by her civilian name. Although it hits Jaiyah and irritates her, in general, this mean blade remains very blunt, there are no like-minded people like Uncle Heino, and the Samoans look at her rather than trample on a blooming flower.
“The next goal wins” Author/source: Film image
In the cultural space of American Samoa presented in the film, this has the effect of unnecessary social violence, which of course it would be in any cultural space, but especially there, because as it was presented in Rongen before the attack, there is a concept of the island femalepeople, that is, people with a free, non-binary gender identity who, at least in the film, are treated by society and culture as equal citizens in every way, who have free power over their gender and identity. Jaiyah’s identity transforms into a deviation from the norm only when Rongen, and presumably in most cases the viewer, arrive in American Samoa. Before their/our arrival, life was flowing wonderfully. The confused faces of the Samoans as to what the problem is with Jaiyah even make the viewer ashamed of their (admittedly not malicious in many cases) curiosity and excitement about the participation of a trans woman on the football team, because it is clear that in the middle L Waititi’s Pacific Ocean, the deviation from the norm is Rongen and the questions that arose.
The elegantly simple way in which a complex and delicate topic is dissected and brought to the attention of the film is beautiful, sincere and effective. Jaiyah gives simple and clear answers to Rongen’s questions, but also to some general human questions: superficiality remains in the background and Jaiyah can start to behave like a person, a friend and a football player. And humanity best characterizes this way and the film itself. Jaiyah, with his concerns, which perhaps are not common to everyone, but which are ultimately his personal and human concerns, one among other people struggling with their own concerns, which also makes his concerns universal understandable. A clever solution doesn’t create the sense that the filmmakers are trying to show off their virtues, it doesn’t create exclusive engagement, and it doesn’t desperately chase any trend, but it seems to come from a sincere place and angrily reduces an equation that has become complicated During the years. time in simple actions that can lift the spirits of even the most zealous moralists and sexupurtans, and to refresh the memory it once again proves to be a good starting point from which to proceed.
Although in essence Waititi shows us a world and a situation that could be considered a utopia by today’s standards, which the real American Samoa probably doesn’t quite match, but, as utopias are wont to do, its pull is strong and the way of thinking and living there is something to aspire to. . With the exception of the moment of the football match at the end of the film, in which the team suffering under pressure saves itself by being happy, the film does not go too deep and reminds us of the almost vulgarly obvious, but beautiful humanity, which, at least with my great surprise, I had to some extent forgotten and with which it passed without it was a little easier to run around.
“The next goal wins” is certainly not perfect, there are gaps and doubts in him, but it is very difficult to get angry with him and not want it.
2024-01-10 13:06:00
revision-its-very-hard-to-get-mad-at-taika-waititis-new-movie-movie