I went into this movie remarkably ignorant of this film as a
piece of art—I avoided the reviews like a vindictive ex-girlfriend—but all too
aware of the film’s subject matter. Jackie Robinson equals, if not an American
hero, certainly American legend. Films about legends inevitably miss their
mark, and in “42” it is no different. Robinson’s relationship to American
racism and hatred in the early part of the twentieth century makes this
cinematic representation of his life feel inadequate.
The title suggests that the film is about Jackie Robinson—42
was his jersey number—but for as much as the film is about him, it simply is not. It’s about race and inclusion in the
general sense, and Robinson simply exists as a vessel for that gradual change
to take place. Branch Rickey (played by Harrison Ford) operates in the film as
a kind of hardcore Methodist, civilizing missionary interested in bringing a
black baseball player to the Brooklyn Dodgers. And Jackie Robinson is his
choice.
Rickey doesn’t want Jackie Robinson because he is a talented
baseball player, though that’s certainly part of the attraction. He wants a
black player to tap into the large black market that exists in Brooklyn. As the
audience learns about him, the only color that really matters to Rickey is
green. Money. He does want to integrate baseball, but not for what we today
would consider the right reason. He wants to fill the slowly decrepitating
seats of Ebbet’s Field.
If the entire film feels like a big bite into a caramel-coated
rotten apple it’s not altogether unexpected. That dark or hard-to-hear stories tend
to be artificially flavored by the Hollywood system is old news. However, the
Robinson story is too significant and too important to condense into a two-hour
film. If it’s possible to watch this film objectively it may not seem as a
complete castration of Jackie Robinson. But it can’t be. Every depection of
Jackie Robinson comes with some kind of inherent political message, some
critique of how America used to operate. For better or worse the story of
Jackie Robinson cannot be told without understanding the history of racism in
America and in professional baseball. It’s a long story and “42” has no
interest in telling most of it.
We hear chants of “nigger, nigger, nigger” from the Phillies
manager Ben Chapman. We see the Dodgers refused a hotel because of Robinson. We
even see a little kid follow in his father’s racist footsteps, screaming racial
epithets at Robinson because his father does it first. But how did we get to this?
America has a well-known history of racial problems, but so does professional
baseball.
Kenesaw Mountain Landis (baseball’s first commissioner)
worked hard to maintain segregation, wanting to keep the Major Leagues and the
Negro Leagues “separate but equal.” Landis, reportedly, went so far as to
reject Bill Veeck’s (also reported) proposal to buy the Philadelphia Phillies
in 1942 when he thought Veeck would stock the team with Negro League players.
The history of black exclusion dates further than Landis,
however, with the foundation of the game itself. Cap Anson, the game’s first
true superstar player, refused to take the field against teams with black
players on their roster, influencing others to do the same. In the late 1880’s
African-Americans were summarily banned from professional baseball, and by 1890
professional leagues were all white.
Baseball remained white’s only until Jackie Robinson and
Larry Doby integrated the game in 1947.
“42” is unnecessary. Any story that can be told about Jackie
Robinson is done best through documentary and first-hand accounting, able to
adequately capture his courage and perseverance. Many people who saw him play
are still alive. Fictionalizing his story trivializes it and diminishes it to
the point where Robinson becomes a character: another chapter in “the scheme of
things.” He isn’t. If there was a Mount Rushmore for the Civil Rights Movement
one could make a convincing argument for Robinson’s inclusion.
Legend—and Robinson is indeed a legend—and films don’t mix.
There is no part of a life like Robinson’s that can be reduced to two-hours and
be expected to provide the significance and intensity of the real thing. And
that is what the film is indeed missing.
It’s an important story, and offers those unfamiliar an
important lesson about baseball and race and how they came to be mixed. The
problem lies not in the telling of the story, but in the information that must
be left out or glossed over. The Jackie Robinson Story is not pretty, nor
endearing. It doesn’t offer a happy ending—he died at the age of 53 from a
heart attack, already prematurely grey from decades of stress and abuse. Jackie
Robinson made it possible for anyone to play baseball, suffering more than a
human being ever should as a result. Pee Wee Reese throwing his arm around
Robinson on the field in Cincinnati didn’t end Robinson’s struggle, and neither
did the Dodgers making the World Series in 1947 on the strength of his Rookie
of the Year campaign. There are better places to learn about Jackie Robinson’s
place in history.
Despite what this movie wants you to believe, the struggle
continues.
