The opening shot of Suzannah Herbert and Lauren Belfer’s documentary Wrestle – which follows four members of a Huntsville, Alabama high-school wrestling team through their 2015-16 season – is a stunner. A green athletic field stretches far below, lit-up at night. In the foreground a group of boys stagger up a steep slope of grass, carrying each other on their backs, grunting and heaving with effort. They are seen in stark black silhouette, against the white-lit green field below, and the image is like something out of a war film, a war film that understands the poetry of strain and struggle. It is an appropriate way to start, since the kids attend J.O. Johnson High School, an extremely poor school with no resources, a school flagged as “failing”, not to mention a school without a wrestling tradition (the program is only 3 years old).
Wrestle is the story of battling against multiple intersecting odds. There’s the difficulty of excellence in sports, in general. Athletics is a meritocracy. Everyone has to work hard, no matter your background. But this is complicated in Wrestle by an environment where excellence doesn’t seem possible. If you’re in a failing school, the sense of failure and fatalism trickles down. It is the job of the young coach, Chris Scribner, to keep the kids on the side of at least the possibility of success, to believe in themselves. A couple of them are hoping for wrestling scholarships to college, the only way they could possibly even attend. Wrestle is the documentation of the season leading up to the State Championships, when the team goes on an unexpected winning streak, beating teams from rich schools, rich white schools. They’re the classic underdogs, come from out of seemingly nowhere.
Wrestle includes sequences as gripping as any fictional “sports movie”, so much so I found myself clapping out loud at times, in frustration and excitement, urging one of the kids on to win, or gasping when one of them is defeated. This is intensified by a feeling of worry, a kind of, “My God, please let everyone be okay” thing which is difficult to manufacture, at least without sentimentality or manipulative uplift. (Two Oscar-nominated docs from last year – Hale County This Morning, This Evening and Minding the Gap generated a similar sense of urgency and investment, albeit in very different ways.)
Herbert, who grew up in Memphis, embedded herself with the team for the season, accompanied by cinematographer Sinisa Kukic, whose work is unobtrusive, and yet intuitive and gorgeous (see previously mentioned opening shot). Four kids emerge from the pack, carrying the film forward in separate narratives. There’s Jailen, whose mother abandoned him when he was 2, and raised by his grandfather. Sensitive and articulate, Jailen gestures at his wrestling awards tacked on the wall and informs the camera, disarmingly honest, “I have a commitment to fulfill as a black male, and not letting the African race down by becoming a menace to society.” This burden lies heavy on the kids. It’s the air they breathe. When Jailen is almost arrested for public urination, it is only the presence of the cameras – and Coach Scribner’s intervention – that keeps the event from careening out of control.
Jaquan, a good-natured kid, skates on thin ice: he skips school (which threatens his position on the team), he eats junk food (his “weigh ins” are always cliffhangers), and seems always on the verge of going down the wrong path. His mother harangues him about skipping school, and jokes to the camera, “I got a white son.” (Wrestling seen as a white boy’s sport was yet another hurdle Coach Scribner had to combat in setting up the program). Teague, one of the few white kids on the team, is a ferocious competitor, but his behavioral issues get in the way (he doesn’t take the meds he’s supposed to, and instead self-medicates with marijuana). It is Jamario, though, who is the heart and soul of the film.
A talented wrestler, Jamario is also a troubled young man who struggles with anxiety and depression, especially as the birth of his first child approaches. He says, brushing it off, “I just have mood swings and mental breakdowns, that’s all.” There’s an incredible sequence when he breaks down in tears in the back seat of Coach Scribner’s car, and Scribner tries to talk him out of the breakdown. Jamario declares, “I’m gonna break the cycle. I’m not gonna be a deadbeat dad.” But you can feel the anxiety in the statement, as well as the almost self-fulfilling prophecy embedded in such enormous pressure. The pressure gets to Jamario. He wants to quit the team. Scribner has to go to Jamario’s house to basically drag him out of bed. Everyone – his girlfriend, his mother, Scribner – devote their lives to keeping Jamario on track. It’s a full-time job. It is in these sequences where sticking something out – even just making it through the wrestling season, no matter how much you want to quit – becomes hugely symbolic. It’s not just about wrestling. The team practices have a sense of real urgency, they’re like military drills, getting the boys ready for compat under fire. It’s life or death.
Except for Jailen’s grandfather, none of the boys have adult male figures in their lives. All the dads are dead, incarcerated, or just plain gone. They are felt mostly as a haunting absence. Coach Scribner, only 10 years older than the kids on the team, fills an enormous void.
It was he who set up the program, a young man from up north. In other words, not from around these here parts. In a lot of ways, he calls to mind Ken Howard’s “white shadow” (TV series The White Shadow, 1978-81). Scribner’s devotion to the kids is of the tough-love variety. He talks on their level (“Stop being a dickhead” he tells Jamario at one point), he pushes them, he won’t take “No” for an answer. You can’t just walk away from the team. Coach Scribner won’t let you. You see how he has basically become a member of everyone’s family, befriending the mothers, the girlfriends, the grandfathers, creating a multi-tentacled support system to catch the kids if they fall. He knows everyone’s home situation. He knows where to find the kids if they slack off. He is heavily involved in their lives. Even with the gaps in experience and understanding, he’s there for them (even if it’s just, at times, as a figure to rebel against).
Put together from 600 hours of footage, Wrestle has a raw clarity and almost frayed power, coming at you from all different directions. The documentary scoops you into its forward momentum with periodic reminders of the end point (“15 weeks to State Championships,” etc.), creating an organic buildup of suspense. The stakes are higher than just “will they make it to the State Championships?”, but Wrestle doesn’t slack off on the excitement of high school sports, too, capturing the feelings of pure triumph when they win, and searing disappointment when they lose. It’s a roller-coaster ride of emotion.
Late in the film, as Scribner drives to school, he talks about his own troubled youth. He ran with the wrong people, did drugs (is now sober), got in all kinds of trouble. But there’s one crucial difference, a difference mostly unspoken and yet felt throughout. He acknowledges it, saying, “I made all the choices they did and I was given a lot of chances. I don’t know how that’s fair.”
It’s not. It’s not fair.
Wrestle played at Indie Memphis while I was there, but unfortunately I missed it. I am very glad to have caught up with it. It’s now available on streaming platforms (iTtunes, Googleplay, Amazon, Fandagonow). It will also premiere on ITVS on May 20.
