Y'know, I try not to hate on people. I generally try to give people like 50 Cent and Kristen Stewart the benefit of the doubt. But one could be forgiven for thinking that Billy Crystal is the cinematic Antichrist.
These films stand like demonic, blood-crying statues over the graveyard of a once-promising career. I would defy you to sit through any of those trailers, let alone mount some kind of defence for the hours of work some innocent carpenter put into making sets, or a craft services person put into slicing bagels, to help create these monstrosities. But then again, the man brought us some of the finest movie magic of the 1980s, from WHEN HARRY MET SALLY to THE PRINCESS BRIDE to his cameo in THIS IS SPINAL TAP (all Rob Reiner films, interestingly enough).
Maybe Reiner's got nothing to do with it, or maybe he just had a bad decade, because his work in 2001's 61* is fantastic. Crystal directs this period piece about a hallowed era in American sports history, the fall of Babe Ruth's hallowed single-season home run record to fellow Yankee Roger Maris. Thomas "I Just Want My Kids Back" Jane plays Mickey Mantle, the great American hero, and Barry Pepper plays the cold, professional Maris, whose chase of Ruth's record makes him as notorious as it does famous.
When a sport like baseball is at its best, it reveals something about the human spirit, about our tenacity, our refusal to accept defeat. As part of the game, athletes become symbols rather than individuals, and while there is a certain nobility to this mythmaking, it can also be a ruthless and uncaring process.
Crystal, the director, completely understands this, even if his own career path as an actor seems to prove the opposite. The film is fascinated by the construction of a media image, about what the public wants to see and how the public is fed what it craves (side note: no one "craved" to see ANALYZE THAT, Billy). It's a refreshing perspective for a baseball movie, a genre that often gets caught up in romanticizing the fairest game and finding poetry in its heroes.
Not to say that I dislike those kinds of films. In fact, every year around the start of baseball season, I brush off my copies of ROOKIE OF THE YEAR, LITTLE BIG LEAGUE, and THE SANDLOT and sit in child-like joy at the purity of America's pastime. But this is a baseball movie more in the tradition of EIGHT MEN OUT or COBB, the ones that show us the dark edges of baseball.
Honestly, 61* is probably only of interest to baseball enthusiasts anyway, so if you came this far for some sort of film criticism, or to watch me take another shot at Billy Crystal, you could probably just skip down to the last line of the review. But if you're still with me here, let's get into some baseball talk.
The film is framed around Mark McGwire's race to beat Maris' record, essentially told in flashback, but this choice unintentionally adds a really interesting layer to the film's questions about why there was such a backlash against Maris attempting to break Ruth's record. With McGwire's name tarnished in the hearts of millions of fans since his steroids non-admission admission, there's an implicit question being asked about how pure any of our heroes are. Ruth was certainly no saint himself, adopting a child that he had fathered with another woman with his wife, and there are widespread accusations that amphetamines were a common part of the game back in his day. History has continued to chip away at the images of the heroes of the game, and will continue to do so.
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