The Sheila Variations

Seabiscuit

I saw "Seabiscuit" last Friday. I participated in the opening-night frenzy. It was well worth it.

First off: there is a scene at the beginning, depicting Red Pollard's childhood (before everything went to shit) - and the family is sitting around a table, playing a guessing-game with quotes from poetry. The whole family is engaged, laughing, the little kids thinking as hard as they can, trying to finish the Wordsworth quotes, or the Emerson quotes, or the Shakespeare quotes. For anyone who knows me, and who knows the story of my family's "allowance ritual", you will know what that scene would have called up for me. I saw my own family in the faces of the Pollards. It was beautifully done.

Secondly, let me just echo Roger Ebert, he says it better:

The character I liked the best was Tom Smith, and once again Chris Cooper shows himself as one of the most uncannily effective actors in the movies. Here he seems old, pale and a little worn out.

In "Adaptation," only a year ago, he was a sunburned swamp rat. In John Sayles' "Lone Star" he was a ruggedly handsome Texas sheriff. How does he make these transformations? Here, with a few sure movements and a couple of quiet words, he convinces us that what he doesn't know about horses isn't worth knowing.

Like I said: I cannot improve upon that description.

And more:

"Seabiscuit" will satisfy those who have read the book, and I imagine it will satisfy those like myself, who have not. I have recently edged into the genre of racing journalism, via My Turf, by William A. Nack, the great writer for Sports Illustrated.

I was at a reading where he made audience members cry with his description of the death of Secretariat, and I saw people crying after "Seabiscuit," too. It's yet more evidence for my theory that people more readily cry at movies not because of sadness, but because of goodness and courage.

All I can say to that is: true, true, true.

Posted by sheila