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Friday Night Lights

Posted by jamesgarvin (A) on February 16, 2005 at 08:23:15

I watched this film expecting something along the lines of "Remember the Titans." What I got was something much different. Billy Bob Thornton plays a football coach in Odessa, Texas. It is about the Permian High School football team that has won a few state titles. While Remember the Titans, a decent film for what it was, is supposed to be an "inspirational" story of overcoming odds, Friday Night Lights is more about the sociology of High School Football.

It is based upon a true story. Apparently, Odessa, Texas is a small, rather depressed town. The film shows how important high school football is to the town, and more specifically, how the residents of the town develop their identity and importance through the football team. When the team wins, their lives have meaning. When the team looses, then their lives have no meaning.

I would highly recommend the film to anyone who has a passing interest in what high school football has become to many people in this country. The players are idolized by the local community, they have their choice of the most attractive girls, and are invited to the best parties. The coaches are essentially told to win the state title, or look for another job. A player gets a serious injury, the player wants to play because his life has been prepared to do nothing but play football, and the coach, knowing the player probably should not play, wants to believe that the player can play, and therefore puts him on the field. It is difficult for some of us to understand that there is so much riding on these games, for the players, the coaches, and the towns.

There is a featurette on the D.V.D. which includes the actual persons that are depicted in the film. What I learn is that the events in the film are real, and not "glorified" by the screenwriter or the studio. They do not win the big game because the test audience demanded a happy ending. We learn that not only the events in the film are real, but also that the importance of the team to the town and school is just as real.

The film was directed by Peter Berg, whose credits include the following: Very Bad Things, which was just very bad, and The Rundown, which was mindless explosions. Perhaps he has turned the corner.

Another thing: I recently saw "The Bourne Supremacy". They employed that hand held jerky camera technique made popular by the geniuses at M.T.V. It was very distracting. That technique was used sparingly in Friday Night Lights, which added to the sense of realism, as though you were watching a documentary. Goes to show that a little goes a long way.

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