In Alan Clarke's memorable movie SCUM (1979), the inmates of a young person offender's prison play Murderball on a basketball court. A game sans any real rules, it provides the chance for them to vent their frustrations through legitimized violence: anything goes, apparently.
Filmed in the early years of this century, Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro's documentary makes similar claims for the game of wheelchair rugby. Also played on a basketball, the game offers the chance for young quadriplegics to express their aggressive instincts in a sport that might have its own set of rules but seems extremely violent, much more so than rugby for able-bodied players.
The action follows the fortunes of the American team, which had won most of the major tournaments prior to the film's beginning, but failed to win the World Championship held in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2002. The film examines the team's preparations for the Athens Paralympics two years later, while profiling the struggles of many team members to deal with their disability as well as learn how to become successful members of a match-winning unit.
We have to admire the sheer dogged persistence of many of the young men featured in the documentary, as they negotiate the almost daily struggles to maintain their self-esteem, as well as improving their rugby abilities through training. Success is essential for any team; but perhaps more so for the wheelchair rugby unit. What the players achieve over the time-period covered by the film is, quite simply, wonderful.
And yet, and yet ... The film also shows the subjects trying to conform to the aggressively masculine identities associated with rugby players: tough, uncompromising, sexist. Anyone who has played the game to any standard knows that such stereotypes are found everywhere. Yet rugby has evolved a lot over the last two decades: sophisticated training methods have discovered the importance of less aggressive behavioral forms, for example, trying to understand the opposition's psychology without trying to bash the living daylights out of them. Players have now been encouraged to look into themselves and admit their shortcomings in public, or (better still) acknowledge their sexualities. That does not make them any less brilliant on the field; in fact, such strategies can even improve their performance.
What spoils MURDERBALL is the directors' reluctance to think of rugby as anything else other than a violent, aggressively male sport. It isn't; women's rugby is as popular both for able-bodied as well as disabled players. As Clint Eastwood's film INVICTUS (2009) has also shown, it is a game whose significance extends far beyond the field, as it becomes a means by which individuals can deal with trauma. Would that MURDERBALL had taken a little time out from its obsession with violence and examined that aspect of the game.
Filmed in the early years of this century, Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro's documentary makes similar claims for the game of wheelchair rugby. Also played on a basketball, the game offers the chance for young quadriplegics to express their aggressive instincts in a sport that might have its own set of rules but seems extremely violent, much more so than rugby for able-bodied players.
The action follows the fortunes of the American team, which had won most of the major tournaments prior to the film's beginning, but failed to win the World Championship held in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2002. The film examines the team's preparations for the Athens Paralympics two years later, while profiling the struggles of many team members to deal with their disability as well as learn how to become successful members of a match-winning unit.
We have to admire the sheer dogged persistence of many of the young men featured in the documentary, as they negotiate the almost daily struggles to maintain their self-esteem, as well as improving their rugby abilities through training. Success is essential for any team; but perhaps more so for the wheelchair rugby unit. What the players achieve over the time-period covered by the film is, quite simply, wonderful.
And yet, and yet ... The film also shows the subjects trying to conform to the aggressively masculine identities associated with rugby players: tough, uncompromising, sexist. Anyone who has played the game to any standard knows that such stereotypes are found everywhere. Yet rugby has evolved a lot over the last two decades: sophisticated training methods have discovered the importance of less aggressive behavioral forms, for example, trying to understand the opposition's psychology without trying to bash the living daylights out of them. Players have now been encouraged to look into themselves and admit their shortcomings in public, or (better still) acknowledge their sexualities. That does not make them any less brilliant on the field; in fact, such strategies can even improve their performance.
What spoils MURDERBALL is the directors' reluctance to think of rugby as anything else other than a violent, aggressively male sport. It isn't; women's rugby is as popular both for able-bodied as well as disabled players. As Clint Eastwood's film INVICTUS (2009) has also shown, it is a game whose significance extends far beyond the field, as it becomes a means by which individuals can deal with trauma. Would that MURDERBALL had taken a little time out from its obsession with violence and examined that aspect of the game.