HOOSIERS B+
USA Great Britain (114 mi) 1986
d: David Anspaugh
Often considered one of the best sports movies ever, the standard
by which others are measured, this is a case where truth is stranger than
fiction, as this is inspired by the real life story of the 1954 Milan High
School Indians, with an enrollment of only 161 students, winning a state high
school basketball championship, the smallest school to ever win a state
basketball championship in Indiana. This mirrors a similar incident in
the state of Illinois in 1952 where Hebron, with an enrollment of only 98
students, beat perennial powerhouse Quincy, the fourth-winningest high school
basketball program in the country as of 2010, holding the record for most state
tournament appearances, to win the state high school basketball championship in
overtime at a time when both schools competed against schools of all sizes.
These stories have a life of their own and reflect the state’s unique
basketball-obsessed character, as unlike the film, in real life the game was
much more dramatic. Trailing in the 4th quarter 28-26 against 4-time
state champion Muncie Central, the coach ordered a stall and Milan, with no
time clock in that era, held the ball without moving for over four minutes
before eventually missing a shot. Tied at 30, they again held the ball
for a full minute until 18 seconds were left, setting up a final shot that does
in fact resemble the movie, called the Milan Miracle, where the newspaper The Indianapolis Star calls it the top
sports story in Indiana history. Sports movies tend to be laden with
cliché’s and this one is no different, except here, despite the fictionalized
dramatization, they all have elements of truth, where one of the film’s
greatest strengths is capturing the essence of growing up in a small town
surrounded by rural farmlands, where on Friday nights high school football or
basketball games bring out the entire community, as it’s the biggest event of
the week, becoming the religion of the town where everyone is a believer, as
winning has a way of bringing everyone together. Given a sense of
authenticity from the director, who played middle school basketball in nearby
Decatur, Indiana, and writer Angelo Pizza, as both met while attending Indiana
University during the basketball frenzied Bob Knight
era, winning an Olympic Gold Medal (1984 Gold Medal) and three
national college championships (1976, 1981, 1987) in little
more than one decade.
Set in the early 50’s, the opening sequence shot by Fred
Murphy of driving through the beautiful back country roads offers the true
character of the rural Midwest, where the new basketball coach Norman Dale
(Gene Hackman) eventually lands in Hickory, Indiana. Greeted by the high school principal, an old
friend who’s apparently willing to overlook something that took place over ten
years ago when Dale was coaching a college team, but left in disgrace, now
given a second chance to resuscitate his fledgling career in lowly high school
basketball. He’s immediately met with
open contempt by both players and parents when he changes the shooting
oriented, offensive-minded coaching style, instead encouraging fundamentals,
conditioning, and hard-nosed defense.
Even today at the professional level, not everyone buys into this
philosophy, as it de-emphasizes showboating, individual talent and skill, and
encourages teamwork where everyone works together, where no one star player is
valued more than anyone else, as everyone plays a part in winning and losing. Today, this team concept has become cliché,
but only because of the success of people like coach K, Mike
Krzyzewski, as it builds teamwork and solidarity where players learn to
trust one another and at least have an opportunity to win even when they’re not
playing their best. But in many small
towns, the parents think they know better than the coach does, initiating
gripes and rumors that often lead to scandal, as it does here, where the town
gathers a petition to remove the coach.
In dramatic fashion, the town’s best player, Jimmy (Maris Valainis),
who’s been sitting out honoring the death of last season’s coach, agrees to
return but only if the coach stays. With
his return, the team is quickly operating on all cylinders and starts a winning
streak.
While this is a basketball movie, with much of it set inside
a gym or a locker room, the local flavor is provided by the brilliance of
secondary characters, such as Barbara Hershey, an unmarried high school English
teacher, who has her doubts about the coach’s secret past and the excessive
attention paid by society to sports in general, but she is eventually won over
by the coach’s ethics and occasional noble gestures, such as attempting to
rehabilitate the town drunk, Dennis Hopper, still resting on the laurels of his
high school past when he missed the game-ending final shot at Regionals. His avid enthusiasm and knowledge of local
teams, however, is unparalleled, and Dale encourages him to sober up and become
his assistant coach, especially since he’s distracting the focus of his son,
one of the team’s steadiest players.
Even in a cliché riddled film about a small farming community where the
outcome is never in doubt, these actors rise above the predictable material,
adding a degree of complexity that might feel surprising, as their interaction
always feels dramatically interesting, never knowing where their side routes
are going to lead, where the warm and heartfelt music by Jerry Goldsmith adds
dramatic heft as well, always grounding the film in a sense of Americana and
community. Some may find an
old-fashioned story about instilling moral values in a small, all-white high
school basketball team that still takes set shots as outdated, as teams today
play a much more physical and uptempo urban style game where high flying dunks
are the norm, but consider the time, a post-war, 50’s, conservative era when
America was just getting back on their feet, where it was these small town
values that would lead them out of the darkness of world war and the Depression,
where these kids were already shocked by the death of their earlier coach, so
learning to take advantage of the second chances life offers is a valuable
lesson. The unsympathetic doubters in
town become the team’s biggest boosters in the end as winning has a way of
healing all wounds. Shooting the finals
at the legendary Hinkle Fieldhouse, one of the original basketball
arenas built in America (1928), adds an air of historic authenticity to the
film, as the Butler Bulldogs who play there still personify the tenacious
Hoosier spirit, and both the arena itself is a National Historic Landmark,
while in 2001 the film was also selected to the National Film Registry by the
Library of Congress, claiming it is “culturally, historically, or aesthetically
significant.”
