Still We Believe

It's a sign of excellent documentary filmmaking that they then decided, once the season was over and the project had developed, that the focus of this film became the journey of those hardcore fans over the course of the season. The team is obviously the centerpiece, but it's almost a MacGuffin (Hitchcock's term for something in a film that seems to be the center of attention but which is just there to get the action moving along -- like the Maltese falcon in "The Maltese Falcon" or Private Ryan in "Saving Private Ryan", etc.)

As such, this is most assuredly not a document of the 2003 season, and not a conventional sports documentary. As a Red Sox fan, I surely enjoyed the perspective of seeing the oh-too-familiar vicissitudes of the season through seven fans' eyes. The fans they ended up selecting are a sort of spectrum of types, from the radio talk show call-in regulars Angry Bill and Jermaine to a pair of working class sisters to a high school coach and a fire fighter, with the California transplant owner of Sonny MacLean's as a stand-in for the diaspora of Red Sox fans across the country.

There are, to be sure, a few candid sequences from the team and its management to spice things up, but in the context of the whole film, it's a way of showing how the team matters so much more in some ways to its fans than to the players or owners. The players and owners do care, but they have their bottom lines and a sense of other professional opportunities. For the fans, their loyalty is supreme and it is they who seem, in the end, to actually make up the entity known as the Boston Red Sox more than the guys who actually put it on at the ballpark.

What I found particularly interesting in watching this film on DVD (especially after this past election and its discussion of values and loyalty) is how well the center of this movie does seem to be the sense of faith beyond reason, of shared community, of resilience in the face of disappointment that characterizes Red Sox fans and New England.

It should not be a surprise that many of the people involved in this movie are students of the Ken Burns school of documentary film; Burns himself focusses on 'The American Experience' as a recurring theme in his own work, from 'The Civil War' and 'Baseball' to 'Brooklyn Bridge' and 'Jazz'. There are traces of the Burns style here, but there are no sonorous voiceovers or talking heads. The technique is to follow the fans as they watch the games and mull the aftermath, interspersing this with occasional tidbits from the players and management. One gets the best of both worlds: the narrative of the structure of the season is clear as a backdrop, but the temptation of the conventional sports film does not intrude upon the main text of really showing how the fans are turned inside out by their odd relationship with their team.

The subtle, and almost quiet musical tracks used are an indicator this is not your traditional sports documentary. The editing and selectivity of the filmmakers in making the final film is even more apparent in looking at the DVD edition, which contains many out-takes and extra scenes. These out-takes nearly all have interest -- the very, very long featurette on "Angry Bill" in isolation is nearly a documentary in itself -- but if you view them in sequence after watching the movie, you'll understand exactly how disciplined the filmmakers were in making the decisions they did about what to leave out.

One of the nice DVD extras is interviews with the participants in the film at the movie's premiere. It's a sort of "they're OK" coda that may take some of the sting out of the sad ending to the 2003 season (where the main film stops).

Note: there's one easter egg available from the main screen -- featuring Kevin Millar on proper foot care. It's not the infamous "dancing Kevin" video, alas, but is amusing.

I wrote earlier that "Still We Believe" has obvious interest to Red Sox fans, but I believe the success of this will make this interesting viewing above and beyond that core audience. The theatrical release was largely limited to New England, and I think that's a pity, as it would've been interesting to see how it would run to audiences that didn't have a strong rooting interest in the team or perhaps even in baseball. The great theme of how following a sports team is one of the essential emotional -- almost spiritual -- aspects of American life is subtly and expertly stitched together and I think beyond being one of the best sports documentaries of all-time, this movie has a qualification as one of the best documenatries, period, of 2004.

I would definitely recommend this for Red Sox fans and for all baseball fans, and would cautiously recommend this to those who just dig good documentaries that end up being about something a little bit more than the apparent subject matter. If you saw the film in the theater when it came out and enjoyed it, I would definitely recommend the DVD for its extensive bonus material.