“Friday Night Lights” for Navajo teens

There's a big barn burner waiting for anyone who presses play on the new Netflix sports drama Rez Balland we're not talking about any of the high school hoop games depicted in periodic, fleeting montages. No, the really tough competition here is between everything special and everything formulaic about this film. On one side of the square, you have a vivid sense of culture, place and milieu – the details of modern Native American life that characterize the arid rural setting. On the other hand, you have what it takes for every post-Hoosiers Basketball diary: the pep talks in the locker room, the slow-motion buzzers, the climb on the way to the championship game. One could say that the specific aspects of Rez Ball We improve on the standard versions, but just as often they seem at odds, like two teams fighting for our attention.

The film takes place on a reservation in New Mexico. What football means to the small town in Texas Friday Night LightsBasketball is in this place: most of the boys in the area want a spot on the team, the Chuska Warriors, and everyone comes to the games. Sports provide distraction and perhaps a semblance of hope for a struggling community. The team's star, a lanky, brooding boy named Nataanii (Kusem Goodwind), recently lost his mother and sister in a drunken accident. This is all too common here, as we can see from various snapshots of roadside memorials.

As the film begins, a new tragedy rocks the Warriors. The team, shaken by the defeat, is also thrown out of the game. Jimmy (Kauchani Bratt) – Nataanii's best friend, the Robin to his Batman, as the color commentators put it – is forced to take up the mantle of captain. Will the boys be able to overcome their grief and reverse their losing streak? Rez Ball, like Ben Affleck's recent tear film The way back, is truly a serious melodrama that combines recovery from the field with a major comeback on the field.

The inspiration here is Canyon dreamsa 2019 New York non-fiction bestseller Just Columnist Michael Powell, who fell short of a real high school Navajo team in Arizona in a single dramatic season. Powell illuminated not only the ins and outs of Rez Ball — a faster, more intense version of the game played on reservations in the Southwest — but also the hardships faced by the players, whose families faced unemployment, domestic violence, alcoholism and suicide to fight had idea. Yes, it was a book about basketball, but also about the generational trauma of Native Americans.

That's certainly an element of Rez Ballwhich creates a fictional tapestry of conflict from Powell's source material. Navajo director Sydney Freeland, who co-wrote the film with him Reservation dogs“Jimmy” co-creator Sterlin Harjo compares Jimmy’s emotional crucible to that of his mother Gloria (Julia Jones), a former teenage basketball star who is reluctant to support her son’s basketball dreams, perhaps fearing they will drive him down as well The path to disappointment she took. The character's struggle with sobriety is one of the subplots intended to paint a sobering picture of reservation life.

Other elements of the film are more archetypal. The team's coach, played by Dark winds Star Jessica Matten is a former WNBA player coming off a breakup and unhappy about being back on the reservation instead of taking a more lucrative job at a major university. She mostly speaks in platitudes and slogans: “Leave everything on the field, dig deep, stay in the game, etc. You know the drill, the tough love language of sports mentors.” Do you think this hometown hero will make peace with her homecoming? Meanwhile, Jimmy's romance with a fellow burger joint (Zoey Reyes) feels like a producer's note, even if there's something sweet about the way their courtship is sparked by her offer to teach him Navajo.

The Warriors need to get in touch with tradition to get their mojo back. They find strength in shepherding exercises and spiritual ceremonies and begin putting on plays in their native language – a clever way to provoke their wealthy championship rivals at a Catholic school in Santa Fe. In a way, Rez Ball finds a similar path to success: it partially circumvents the familiarity of its underdog arc through cultural peculiarities. This ranges from the game announcers, who pepper their analysis with talk of frying bread, to the large, likeable ensemble of Indigenous actors – although almost none of Jimmy's teammates are given much in the way of individual personalities or backstories. (For a more detailed portrait of this interpersonal world, see Netflix other Take up the topic, the documentation Basketball or nothingwhich follows the same Arizona reservation team profiled in Powell's book.)

There is a special resonance to see these special children, the young stars of a historically marginalized community, being accepted onto the board. You might just wish that you were following their magical course Rez Ball a little further from the inspirational sports pap playbook. An entire season is condensed into a series of glossy highlight reels, with court proceedings overlaid with inspirational music (composed by indie electronic star Dan Deacon, who also scored another Netflix basketball drama). Hurry) and arranges a rematch with the trash-talking suburban teenagers who defeated her in the first act: the crowd-pleasing cliché wins at the buzzer. But it's not a blast; The more unique side of the film keeps it close enough.