Martin is a 12 year old boy whose dream is to play in the Majors for the Montreal Expos. Its 1969, in the midst of baseball unionization and a growing, hopeful Montreal the Expos enter their first season in the big leagues. Every now and again, in a scene straight out of Michael Owen’s Zero to Hero, Martin’s favourite Expo comes to visit him in moments of crisis. And it’s this use of the Expos where the film falls down the most.
As the omniscient viewer we know that the Expos are no more, disbanded in 2004 with a new Washington D.C. franchise taking its place. Though the film is set in the 60s (and doesn’t it try to let us know with every home footage, super 8 scene) I felt it would have been clever to use the Expos recent decline as a point of sadness. Martin wanted to play for the Expos, but no other 12 year old boy growing up in the French-Canadian provinces has that opportunity, or even that dream any more.
But instead of taking a swipe at poignancy here, the film takes it in the wrong places. Martin’s mother kisses another man, his Dad and her husband witnesses the kiss but lets it slide after a short holiday. There’s no arc from disappointment to outrage to acceptance, especially for a man so set in his ways. The film’s other attempt at poignancy comes through the father of Sophie, Martin’s friend and teammate, a man whose wife died in a car accident. A self pitying, baseball fanatic his underdeveloped character comes full circle too quickly, his lack of screen time doesn’t justify the hurried resolution of the character when he agrees to help coach the team in their last game of the summer.
Another discrepancy I found within the movie was the immediate understanding of baseball in a French speaking province. The French terminologies would not yet have been fully completed, commentators and fans alike would be in a quandary as to particular plays, but here they seem to understand it immediately. Odd, but perhaps for the sake of the movies length it was omitted.
The movie reaches its climax about 7 minutes in when a young boy, of no more than 11, gives a speech about baseball. Baseball as the great unifier, baseball as the great integrator, baseball as America’s heart, not just America’s game. It’s a rousing speech from someone so young and while its delivery is fairly comical its sentiments are hard to argue with when you consider the socio-political history of the sport.
“Baseball isn’t just the national sport of Americans. It’s one of their strongest bonds. For immigrants coming to the US, baseball and its long history is a rallying point, a conversation starter, an ideal way of integrating. My father once told me that to understand America’s heart and soul, you have to understand baseball. Thank you.”
But to give the film the credit where it’s most probably due is in Martin’s parents’ strive to enter the new, changing world of Woodstock, of Vietnam, of moon exploration. As his Mother gains her own independence – a struggle at first contrasted by Sophie’s immediate acceptance amongst the baseball team, her rejection of baseball, and then her return to the team – his father becomes impotent, his brand of masculinity no longer welcomed. As his wife finds her own answers through another man and the Rolling Stones, he sheds his conservative nature through coaching the b-team of which his son is a part of. Towards the end of the movie he recaptures his masculinity, becomes metaphorically virile once more and rebuilds a once faltering relationship with his son.
Don’t be fooled, this isn’t a film about Martin. Nor is it a film about his Dad. It’s a film about baseball as a metaphor for the family unit: the integration into and of that unit, the bonds built by that unit and the beating murmur at the centre of that unit.
Summary: Much like Martin the film itself is caught out while base-running. In it’s attempts to get from one topic to another it flits over too many things at once.
Link to trailer: http://www.cinemamontreal.com/trailers/188878/A_No-Hit_No-Run_Summer.html
Articles consulted:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05154/515468.stm
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/files/1969_0220_times__sports_ro.jpg
Tags: A No Hit No Run Summer, Baseball, canada, Cinema, expos, Film, french, montreal, montreal expos
