There are different ways to gauge how good a "based on a true story" film is.
My personal preference -- more like intuition, actually -- is how strong an urge I have to research the real story in news clippings, Internet postings, etc. etc. after I've seen the film. Blame it on the dayjob, I guess. (And yes, I was lucky enough to catch a sneak preview Thursday, along with my sports-loving father and brother.)
"We are Marshall" rolls its credits over news footage, clippings and photos of the real 1970 tragedy, and I had a hard time waiting to finish this posting so I could start Googling as much as I could on the university, the plane crash, and the names of some of the people the film introduces. I wonder which of those photos I'll see again online, and I'm especially curious how Sports Illustrated covered the team and its rebuilding efforts back then.
There's one scene in particular that is simple and yet sticks with me. Marshall's new football coach, Jake Langyel (Matthew McConaughey) and Red Dawson, (Matthew Fox of "Lost") the assistant coach who made a last-minute decision to give his seat on the plane to another man, are watching reels of West Virginia University game footage, hoping to glean everything they can from the team's rudimentary offensive strategy. It's the only offense simple enough their green-behind-the-ears players can master. They're watching the reels inside a darkened WVU film room, courtesy of the WVU coach, after a gutsy, here-goes-nothing pitch he initially laughed off. But the WVU coach's surprising hospitality starts making sense when two WVU players in uniform accidentally barge in. The WVU coach tries to divert them elsewhere a few moments later and when they turn to face him, Langyel and Dawson see an "MU" memorial sticker on the back of their helmets. Rather than avoid the elephant in the room, the WVU coach asks them if they think the colors on the helmet clash (MU's are green, WVU's are blue). Langyel, aware Dawson is too moved to respond, simply states they look "very classy."
To me, those sort of simple, straightforward sentiments keep "We Are Marshall" from becoming a Disneyfied sports weeper, which is not to say that some viewers won't cry watching it. (I'm just not one of them.) I especially salute Matthew Fox for finding the right touch as a man plagued with guilt and grief that he was the sole "surviving" coach. Back then, men weren't free to be Mr. Sensitive, so Fox had a very fine line to walk in order to keep his character's emotions in check, and I thought he walked that line with confidence. David Strathairn, too, is excellent as always. (See "Good Night, and Good Luck.") Strathairn plays the college president, Donald Dedmon, the man who had the depressing job of trying to hire a new head coach for a football program others thought would best be laid to rest with the majority of its team. The thanks Dedmon got for further pushing past his comfort zone by pestering the NCAA to grant Marshall exception so freshmen could play, was a pink slip from the college board.
On the drive home from the screening, other devastating, sports-centered tragedies came to mind, such as the 1961 plane crash that killed the U.S. Figure Skating team, coaches and parents en route to the World Championships in Prague. Or the 2001 auto accident that nearly wiped out the University of Wyoming men's cross-country team, when eight runners - eight! - were killed when their vehicle was struck head-on by a drunk driver. The Sports Illustrated article that ran after the Wyoming tragedy quoted surviving teammates who said runners process everything -- grief, stress, life -- by running. Similar statements have been made by athletes in other sports. Ekaterina Gordeeva, for example, laced up her skates and got back on the ice after her husband and pair-skating partner, Sergei Grikov, died. She didn't stay in the sport forever after; Red Dawson didn't stay with Marshall's football program either, we learn. But those broken hearts started mending, just a little bit, by getting back out there, even when survivors didn't feel completely "ready."
Something about the rhythm of life, and particularly of sports, asks us to keep it going. Serve, return. Pass, shoot. Throw, catch. Breathe, play. Chant, respond. "We are: ... Mar-shall"
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