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randall 
"I like to watch."
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 Posted - 05/08/2010 : 20:54:15
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I just saw this beautiful documentary in a wholly new way: I streamed it onto my TV set from Netflix. So the screening was historic, just like the football game.
In 1968, an existential moment in American history, and certainly on the Cambridge campus of Harvard, a thoroughly outmatched -- yet as yet undefeated -- Harvard team goes toe-to-toe against the far superior, nationally-ranked, and similarly undefeated Yale squad, which includes future NFL star Calvin Hill and a quarterback named Brian Dowling, the inspiration for "B.D.," the DOONESBURY character who's so cool that he wears his helmet to class and everywhere else.
For most of the game, Yale chews up the Harvard yobbos like so many pieces of popcorn. But late in the second half, angels seem to descend upon the Harvard squad, in the form of fumbles, interceptions, referee calls, etc. And as the title informs -- it quotes the very clever headline which the Harvard Crimson ran after the game -- we already know the outcome before we've settled into our seats. But this film has much more.
It's entirely composed of a replay of the famous game, done in only two or three angles, cf. 1968 Ivy League coverage, interspersed with Errol Morris-like full-on interviews with players from both teams [including Tommy Lee Jones, a Harvard guard in the legendary game]. As the film begins, while Harvard is being smeared, we pay more attention to the interviews than to the actual game. We also get a very clear time-setting: they were protesting at Harvard, but not so much at Yale. A Harvard Vietnam vet describes his aching return home, glad to play on the football team, where all political points of view are kept in the locker room. We come to know many more of the gladiators [or at least their contemporary versions; the passage of time is also touching] and what happened to them as the result of participating in perhaps the most storied football game in Ivy League history.
Nothing more: football-game footage intercut with the remembrances of those who took place in the immortal game. But the pace, tone, and frequency of the intercutting arrive at something else, like all great docs do. It's the soul of Harvard/Yale 29-29, and what this amazing game taught everyone who participated -- the first lesson being, "it's nothing but a football game," which we hear more than once. But as this beautiful film instructs, it's more than that too. |
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Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29
