Ryan McNeil
As much as I love the game of baseball – and I love the game of baseball – it gets harder to believe in as I get older. Teams feel more corporate with every passing year, ballparks crowd every surface they can with ad after ad, and the players are only worried about doing what’s best for themselves as individuals. As time passes, it becomes easier to forget the moments when baseball stood for something greater than dollars and cents. The notion of stadiums being the sites of watershed moments seem difficult to fathom. Saddest of all – the idea that an individual player could do something so much bigger than himself…something that would make him an unassailable hero…seems inconceivable.
But on April 15th, 1947, at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn – one man did just that.
42 is the story of Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman). In the summer of 1945, Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), owner of The Brooklyn Dodgers decides – for many reasons – that the time has come for baseball to be integrated. He doesn’t just want “a black player”, he wants “the right black player”. He wants a man who has many great playing years ahead of him, not behind. He wants a man who has class and integrity. But most importantly, he wants a man, who will have the fortitude to put his own anger and frustrations aside, in the name of something so much bigger.
Turns out that man is Jackie Robinson.
Jackie is plucked from The Kansas City Monarchs of The Negro Leagues, signed to a contract, and sent to spring training with the intent of making Brooklyn’s minor league affiliate in Montreal. Before he leaves, he marries his love Rachel (Nicole Beharie), and brings her along to Florida. As they arrive in the south, signs of just what they’ve entered into abound – with bathrooms and water fountains marked “Whites Only” in clear view. But soon they have a friend in black sportswriter Wendell Smith (Andre Holland), and together they find the fortitude to guide Jackie where he needs to go.
As expected, Jackie earns a spot on Montreal with ease, and one year later his undeniable talent has him destined for a spot with The Dodgers. However, as well-intentioned as Rickey’s plan is, and as fortified as Robinson might be to carry it out, breaking baseball’s colour barrier is not about to come easily. Very few people seem to want him there: not opposing players, not opposing managers, not fans of others teams, not the writers who cover the sport, and not the owners of hotels The Dodgers stay at. Not even, at first, some of Jackie’s own teammates.
But what these hateful people want doesn’t matter. Robinson arrives, and Robinson stays, and 42 is the story of that first historic season in Brooklyn.
In some ways it’s difficult to judge a film like 42. Does one take it on its own merits? Does one think about it’s worth as a baseball film? What about its worth as a biopic? Its worth rises and falls depending on the scale being used to measure it, but I’ll do my best to covey how it stacks up against all three.
I’ve said on this site before that the very best stories of historical figures choose one story to tell and stick to that story. The films that don’t tend to merely skim the surface of things, and play like a greatest hits compilation. By that criteria, 42 is wise to stick to Robinson’s entry into Major League Baseball. It’s able to remind us of just how intolerant and flat-out hateful North America once was. Keeping the story focused to that first season in Brooklyn shows us just why Robinson agreed to the deal that Branch Rickey demanded – it assured him the hero’s role. Not once in the film does Jackie, as Rickey puts it “meet his enemy on their own low ground”. 42 could have grown in complexity by telling a longer tale, but by telling a shorter story, it holds focus.
While the film provides equal doses of hateful repulsion and sepia-toned inspiration, it feels as though it misses something in complexity. In many scenes, Robinson seems to be taking his prompts from the people around him – his wife, his teammates, Smith, Rickey, etc. Very seldom does Robinson seem to be the man at the wheel of his own story. As such, many of the dramatic beats feel very by-the-numbers. It’s the difference between asking Jackie what he thinks in public, and being behind closed doors where he expresses it on his own. To use a baseball metaphor, the film has held the runner at second base while it clearly could have made to third standing up.
While this isn’t the first time Jackie Robinson’s life has been told on-screen (see 1950’s THE JACKIE ROBINSON STORY), it feels like it may be the last. That means that 42 could well be the final word on the subject at the movies, and its treatment bears comparison to similar glimpses at the careers of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Lou Gehrig. While I can’t suggest that 42 is on a par with PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, it does feel as though his story has been told better than that of Ruth or Cobb. THE BABE and COBB wanted to paint their heroes as flawed titans, showing audiences that no legend is beyond reproach. 42 doesn’t want to do that. It doesn’t want to show Jackie getting to the end of those three years and finally speaking up – and speaking up with anger. It doesn’t want to show Jackie losing his starting spot and his output beginning to fade as every athlete’s output does. And it doesn’t want to show Jackie quietly retiring which scuttled Brooklyn’s idea to trade him.
42 wants Jackie Robinson regarded an unassailable hero, and if there is any athlete in sports history that deserves that role, it’s him.
Robinson was fallible, as all humans are, but his legacy goes far beyond what he was able to do on a baseball diamond. His legacy goes beyond his statistics, his awards, or his championships. His legacy comes from being able to see the bigger picture, even if those who facilitated his career could not. It was Robinson who understood, as he once said, that a life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. This legacy deserves to be seen on-screen without reproach and without flaw. In an age where athletes continually play for themselves and their numbers, Robinson stands apart as a man who played for something far greater.
I liked it even more than you did. The moment he goes back on the field after losing it I actually cried. I thought the overall film was treated with respect rather than reverence. And I responded to that. The friend I went with did think that Ford was a bit of a caricature rather than just a character, but after Cowboys and Aliens, this was so much better. 3.5/4 for me.