The most powerful scene in 42
— and probably one of the most important single scenes you’ll see in theaters
this year — also features one of the most vile and despicable characters of
recent memory.
Let me set the scene: a black baseball player, the very first in
the major leagues, stands at home plate. Behind him stands the opposing team’s
general manager, who is spouting every variety of racial hatred imaginable,
material that would make Django Unchained
whimper. The batter is Brooklyn Dodger Jackie Robinson. The manager is
Philadelphia Phillies’ skipper Ben Chapman. Robinson first ignores the dreadful
dialogue. Chapman ramps it up, growing more cocky and nastier as his stunt goes
unpunished. As the threats reach a boiling point, Robinson’s at-bat ends and we
heave a sigh of relief that it’s finally over. But then Robinson comes to bat
again. And again. And again. Each time Chapman is there to greet him with more
vitriol. It feels like a punch to the gut over and over again.
It’s a punishing sequence, but one that is absolutely crucial in
establishing what Jackie Robinson had to overcome to be America ’s first
black baseball player. Only framed against this ugliness do we see how high he
soared. Higher than Chapman. Higher than the Dodgers. Higher than even baseball
itself since Robinson is more American hero than sports star.
42 is an exceptional
movie, one fit for a legend and icon. It is directed forcefully and with
purpose by Brian Helgeland, whose LA
Confidential is another cinema treasure. His view of Robinson is one of
reverence, but also of historical accuracy with shots of the film that match up
perfectly with photographs of the real events. Helgeland, who also wrote the
screenplay, stages Robinson as a complex and conflicted figure, one who
agonized over his role in baseball and questioned everyone’s motives. “Why me?
Why now?” Robinson repeatedly asks Dodger owner Branch Rickey; he never gets a
straight answer.
Rickey — played gruffly by Harrison Ford, who seemingly channels
Jimmy Stewart and Richard Nixon for his performance — keeps telling his newest
player he de-segregated baseball for the money. “Money isn’t black and white.
It’s green,” Rickey tells Robinson in an empty stadium with sections marked for
“whites only” and “colored.” Team owners are a greedy bunch, so Rickey is
probably telling the truth, but then he seems to have a deep trust and
confidence in Robinson and it jumbles his intentions. One thing is for sure, in
1947, with racial segregation still fully enrooted in American society, Rickey
hired a black baseball player. That player, ignoring his own safety and
security, took the field and made history. This is their stories.
The movie plays rather straightforward, so much so that the
beginning scenes feel more like a TV movie — no presence, mediocre acting, bad
lighting — than a feature film. Then 42’s
swing gets stronger and it starts belting homers out of the park. We see Jackie
early in his career in the “Negro leagues” with the Kansas City Monarchs. Even
at that point, his tolerance for racial segregation is miniscule. He chides a
gas station attendant for bathroom privileges: “Maybe we’ll just buy our 99
gallons of gas somewhere else.” A white baseball executive calls him a
troublemaker and Rickey responds: “If he were white you’d call that spirit.”
Midseason, Jackie marries Rachel (Nicole Beharie), who must have
been a saint to put up with her husband’s plan to party-crash the major leagues.
They endure threats, uncomfortable glances and horrible language, but Rachel
never waivers her support. She has a lovely scene late in the movie as she
walks through her Brooklyn neighborhood
catching little updates of Jackie’s game from radios blaring out of windows.
Earlier in the film, she’s the only wife allowed to go to spring training; her
purpose is to uplift and support her husband, whose hellish days are spent
playing baseball with admitted racists.
Although history is paramount, 42 is also an exceptional baseball movie. It doesn’t skimp on the
mechanics of the game, and even shows lengthy segments of Robinson on base,
where he frightened and teased pitchers with his baserunning pyrotechnics. The
film spends a significant amount of time with his teammates — the tolerant and
intolerant ones — as they question their roles in the Jackie Robinson story. Some
sign a letter denouncing his involvement in Dodger baseball; they find
themselves on the trade list. The others ponder Robinson as a player, then
defend him, and then finally accept him. A touching sequence shows shortstop
Pee Wee Reese throwing his arm around Robinson in the infield. “This is for my
family up in those stands, he tells Jackie. “I want them to know what I think
of you.”
By the time the movie gets to Ben Chapman’s ignorant tirade, 42 has prepared us for it. Up until that
point, it was hard to tell where everyone stood on de-segregated baseball. Some
hid their racism. Others flaunted it. Other still hadn’t yet decided either way.
Ben Chapman, played expertly and villainously by Alan Tudyk, essentially draws
a line in the sand straddling home plate that the Dodgers can’t ignore. His
scene is important in the same way that Schindler’s
List is important: we must bear witness to some ugly things, if only to
recoil at its horror and to understand its meaning in the course of human
history.
Jackie Robinson stood at that plate and listened to horror
spewing from Chapman’s mouth. In 42,
we hear it, too. It’s unforgettably cruel, yet it also serves another purpose:
it shows us how high and how far Jackie Robinson soared.
