A student at the University of Washington, Joe Rantz is so poor that he lives in a car wreck and only manages to eat once a day, and then that. Times are tough: in fact, the Great Depression is raging. In order to pay for his studies, Joe tries his luck with the rowing team, which pays its eight members. Spotted by coach Al Ulbrickson, Joe soon joins a group of young men who, like him, come from a working class background. From setbacks to victories, these neophyte athletes will eventually compete at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Inspired by a true story, The Boys in the Boat (They were one man) should have captivated. The film rather induces drowsiness.
The feature film is based on a factual novel written by Daniel James Brown, and published in 2013. George Clooney, as producer and director only, is calling the shots.
Strong on nostalgia, the actor-filmmaker favors an aesthetic that is a bit bombastic, and completely devoid of personality. Even his flop Leatherheads (Double-dealing), a sports comedy set in 1925 and revolving around a football team, had more style.
We are dealing here with a classicism without risk, which is paradoxical. Indeed, one of the main dramatic issues of the film lies in the fact that, for the coach Ulbrickson, betting on the novice team and not on the senior team, constituted a huge challenge. The man was gambling not only with his reputation, but with his career (at a time when unemployment was rampant).
In short, it would have been interesting, not to say relevant, for Clooney to take inspiration from one of his two main characters, and to show a little more formal audacity.
We search in vain for “signature” moments that would succeed in expressing, through images, the extent of the efforts made, as well as the acuteness of the emotions felt by these improbable champions: Rocky exulting at the top of the steps of the Art Museum of Philadelphia; runners training by the sea, at dawn, to the sound of Vangelis’ music in Chariots of Fire (Chariots of fire) ; Jimmy succeeding in extremis the victory basket at the end of Hoosiers (The big challenge)…
Collection of common places
It must be said that Mark L. Smith’s adaptation is to screenwriting what paint by numbers is to pictorial art. The painful training and the first victory at the last minute to begin with, the setbacks which make us fear the worst in the second part, the comeback and the coronation in the third: it’s hyper-convenient, even in the obligatory love story.
From Brown’s book, the production cut out the entire section concerning the preparations for the games, in Berlin, where Hitler camouflaged his anti-Jewish measures already well in place. The film thus focuses exclusively on the rowing team and its coach, who goes all out.
The trouble is that as true as all this is, it is nonetheless a bunch of commonplaces in cinema. The athlete(s) given as losers who overcome adversity (“ underdog “), THE coach who is on his last chance… Recently, Next Goal Wins (A dream team) repeated the same clichés based on another true story.
In the true-life sports drama genre, the aforementioned Chariots of Fireon the parallel courses of two runners (one of whom is Jewish and exposed to anti-Semitism) at the Paris Olympic Games in 1924, beat The Boys in the Boat flat seam.
When working with a predictable narrative, the manner of telling is of crucial importance. All the way, The Boys in the Boat turns out to be devoid of tension and ambition. Breath and tone would have been essential. However, George Clooney’s film remains cushy and soft, from start to finish.