Friday Night Lights
This is a story that tries to capture the audiences fantasy when it comes to an American football being portrayed. Football in the USA is said to be the folktale that has 100 different styles of operas portrait in one game. Football here is not only just a game, but a connection between people even if it’s for business. Friday Night Lights stands as one of America’s greatest ideals: winning and losing only matters only as moments, and obstacles are but deserving. Los Angeles shouldn’t take these profound meanings lightly as they don’t do for movies that are all about humor.
I was expecting a movie about Mr. Mac & The Magic Players from the advertisements and trailers, but the portrayal was completely different. Friday Night Lights has other clichés running throughout the movies style that are ineffective. The movie doesn’t attempt an automatic resolution where everyone smiles, you have to earn it and earn it the characters do.
The plot of the movie is taken from real life events as discussed in Buzz Bissinger’s famous book, Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and a Dream where it follows the events surrounding one of the top high school teams in West Texas called the Odessa-Permian Panthers during the 1988 football season. This is roots American football country where the day of a match is the day shops are shut so the entire population attends the fixtures. For God’s worship, Sunday has been chosen.
Football matches take place on Friday evenings. There are bright chances of a completely perfect season. The championship title of the state has almost been claimed. Where there is some stout expectation about a player like James ‘Boobie’ Miles (Derek Luke) the whole idea of registering a loss is simply unimaginable until Boobie suffers an injury on his knee in the beginning of the season.
He gets hurt in the first game. All of a sudden, other offensive players such as Mike Winchell who plays ‘quarterback’ (Lucas Black), Don Billingsley (Garrett Hedlund) and Chris Comer Lee Thompson Young got a job to do. He is Patterson’s head coach, Gary Gaines, Billy Bob Thornton. In this small town he is the idol, or the most hated person. When the Panthers win, it seems Gaines is undisputed, but the moment they start losing, he’s blacklisted from public life.
There is no shortage of subplots and these are what give Friday Night Lights’ mix its richness. After all, in relation to the action on the field, there can be few ways of putting it. The heart of the movie might have more in common with Rocky than with Hoosiers or The Natural, yet there are plenty of the anticipated ‘big’ moments as well, such as the time when the underachiever has an important role to play or the time when the strong, placid leader aids in a comeback. But even though there is a sense of victory in Friday Night Lights, it does not always occur when it is anticipated.
Expectations cut across all the panthers. Most underdog sports movies revolve around one climax where everything seems bleak but the underdog fights hard to attain victory. Friday Night Lights is about the grind and stress to win. It is very hard for Boobie to recover when he watches everything slip away in a blink of an eye after seeing something shining in the distance.
This young man thought, how easy it is, moving up the ranks to get into the jahes of NFL sooner or later, now walks around staring at the garbage men with other round wearing men. Out of all the characters, Mike is the only one who remains mama’s boy or a soft joking term for all natural mama’s boys. Out of all his dreams, he has to learn the hard life no matter he wins or loses. And then there is Don who is embroiled in this love-hate tension with his father who is an alcoholic Tim McGraw who used to be a star in this basketball team of champions called Panters which is what he wants his son to be also.
How can you explain Friday Night Lights with its cast choices and cinematography? First of all, it has been produced in a completely different fashion. The film is not a slick High Art, it’s realistic and personal. second, it creates the documentary like style. It seems to us that the documentary was shot with a handheld camera with slight oversaturation. Most of the images would look as though they were taken on a camera rather than a film.
It does not look great, but it makes a strong impression. It’s still a brutal looking movie, however. By using relative unknowns, we are not forced to impose any preconceived notions about many of the performers. There are some that are slowly advancing in their careers. For instance, Derek Luke, who was the primary character in Antwone Fisher, who does a superb job here, is still unknown enough to not outshine his character.
Some critics have even dubbed Friday Night Lights as the greatest sports movie of all time. While I think that is taking it a bit too far, Berg’s picture is certainly above average and packs a hefty amount of emotional weight. However, this movie differs from a majority of the sports films that have come our way.
Most sports films are built around game day the actual game is the one moment everyone has been waiting for, and the whole movie is why they go to the cinema. The game here is simply the conclusion, a different way through which what really counts is brought into clearer view. And that alone is enough to make Friday Night Lights different from the rest of the films.
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