BEFORE: I'm back in New York, our quick trip up to Massachusetts is done, and I'm appalled at the state of physical rehabilitation facilites near my hometown, but there's not much I can do about it, except encourage my mother to do her physical therapy every day, and meet the benchmarks so she can move back into her apartment. It's tough because every day she doesn't understand where she is or why my father isn't there when she wakes up, but I know he visits her every day. She's just very confused, and today when we visited we found her in the activity room where the staff was having a "cookout" for the residents, and my Mom asked me what kind of trick we were playing on her. I had to tell her that my sister would be working on getting her out of that facility as soon as possible, maybe within a week if she kept up her physical therapy and if we could get her evaluated by the right person on the right day. I can't do much to improve her situation during a 48-hour trip, and I sure can't move up there to take care of her on a daily basis, so the situation is what it is.
Ben Affleck carries over from "Clerks III". Got some more films coming up here with Affleck and Damon, after tonight there will be four appearances by Matt Damon this year, and three with Affleck, but I think the score willl even out in the end. Still, there's a lot of Movie Year 15 left, anything could happen. Another film set in a school today, I think this is the last one for a while.
THE PLOT: In 1959, a star quarterback from a working-class family is given an opportunity to attend an elite New England preparatory school, but he is conflicted about whether or not to tell his Evangelical classmates that he is Jewish.
AFTER: Tonight's movie is set somewhere in New England, though they don't exactly say where - with Damon and Affleck involved it's probably Massachusetts, though, and it looks like they shot the film in towns like Concord, Framingham, Lowell and Worcester, and most likely you could still find locations in those towns in 1992 that hadn't changed that much since the 1950's. Probably less so today.
Maybe it's the combination of the film being made 30 years ago and being set over 60 years ago, but the whole anti-semitism storyline seems like old hat - I know that we haven't completely eliminated prejudice, far from it probably, but still it all seems fairly outdated. Yeah, I know there's a joke to be made somewhere here about the lack of Jewish sports stars, but I'm not going to make it. I'm sure plenty of Jews are good at playing football, but I don't have any data to support this.
Maybe it's the combination of the film being made 30 years ago and being set over 60 years ago, but the whole anti-semitism storyline seems like old hat - I know that we haven't completely eliminated prejudice, far from it probably, but still it all seems fairly outdated. Yeah, I know there's a joke to be made somewhere here about the lack of Jewish sports stars, but I'm not going to make it. I'm sure plenty of Jews are good at playing football, but I don't have any data to support this.
Just a few years later, the bigger scandal would be about all-white schools giving scholarships to black quarterbacks, and if you were going to make a movie like "School Ties" today, the quarterback's big secret would probably be that he was born female and transitioned to male. Can I make this comparison? I think I just did. In 1959 was it just as scandalous to be Jewish as it is now to be trans? Honestly, I'm not sure, but it demonstrates that there will always be prejudiced people and haters, the only thing that seems to change over time is why they hate other people.
The ethical question here was, should David Greene have informed his teammates that he was Jewish? One argument says yes, of course, because only then would he truly break down the barriers of prejudice and only then could the other students have their perceptions changed over what Jewish people are all about. But then, of course, he either didn't feel it was the right time, or after hearing what the other players thought about Jewish people, he didn't want to be a target or the butt of their jokes. Fair point, but not telling them, even if they didn't ask, is also a lie, it's a lie of omission.
The school also has an "honor code", all the students take an oath to not cheat, and also to not cover up for any cheating classmates. So the whole movie David Greene is at odds with Charlie Dillon, because he stole his quarterback position and then his girlfriend - and the last half of the film concerns David seeing Charlie using a crib sheet, and when there's an inquiry into who cheated, David turns in Charlie, but Charlie also accuses David. So the whole class is threatened with a failing grade unless the cheater comes forward, but when he doesn't, it comes down to a vote. Who do the students believe, the quarterback who lied about his religion or the halfback with a personal ax to grind?
It's a rather simple film, and it maybe didn't do that well at the box office, but over time it became one of those sleeper hits, something people remembered years later as an OK film, and now it's just one step away from being a classic. It's kind of weird how that happens over time to some films, but not to others. I guess I'm always trying to find those classic films that I never watched when they first came out, then I kind of missed them on VHS and DVD, too - but thanks to streaming and cable I'll eventually get to see everything, if I just keep checking the lists every month of what's new to Netflix and AmazonPrime and I keep scanning the cable guide.
Also starring Brendan Fraser (last seen in "No Sudden Move"), Matt Damon (last seen in "Stillwater"), Chris O'Donnell (last seen in "Cookie's Fortune"), Randall Batinkoff (last seen in "Walking and Talking"), Andrew Lowery (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Cole Hauser (last seen in "Running with the Devil"), Anthony Rapp (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), Amy Locane (last seen in "Secretary"), Peter Donat (last seen in "The China Syndrome"), Zeljko Ivanek (last seen in "The Last Duel"), Kevin Tighe (last seen in "Fat Man and Little Boy"), Michael Higgins (last seen in "Swimfan"), Ed Lauter (last seen in "Lassiter"), Peter McRobbie (last seen in "Shaft" (2000)), John Cunningham (last seen in "For Love or Money"), Elizabeth Franz (last seen in "The Pallbearer"), Matt Hofherr, Jeff Hochendoner (last seen in "Warrior"), R.E. Rodgers (last seen in "Bad Boys II"), John Speredakos, Edward Seamon, Dan Desmond (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Claudia Everest, Leon B. Stevens, Cody Conklin, Benari Poulten, Stanton Denman, Sean Kent, Luke Jorgensen, Kent Osborne, Jayce Bartok (last seen in "Cop Out"), Jeff Nichols, Will Lyman (last seen in "A Perfect Murder"), Susan Johnston, Sandra Landers (last seen in "The Report"), Ken Garito (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Karen Shallo (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), Gregory Chase.
RATING: 5 out of 10 essay questions
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