Kevin Costner – Ripple Effects

Lobster, Lobster

In pouring rain I drove north from Wayland, MA on Interstate 95 to Portland, Maine, about 120 miles. As I came close to the city, anxiously looking for exits with the car wipers at the fastest speed, I saw a sign in a distance with a digital message. I strained to check out what it was saying, could be crucial information. Soon I got close enough to read this alert: “Rain Pounding on Road” Thanks. That was helpful.

A bit later after I exited and entering Portland, I was met with another warning sign: “Flash flooding in some intersections”. Thanks again. Which ones?

After a few tense moments, we found our way to an Arabica Café, calmed down with a latté and regrouped. In this weather, no sight-seeing around town was possible, so might as well drive to our next destination, a must-see, pounding rain or not. That’s New Harbor in the eastern tip of Maine, about 70 miles from where we were. What’s the bait? Lobster of course… and, Kevin Costner.

Earlier on I came across the website epicurious (love the name), Shaw’s Fish and Lobster Wharf in New Harbor was listed as one of their 7 favorite lobster shacks in Maine, and the tidbit that it’s one of the filming locations of the movie Message In A Bottle. So obviously, the motivation to get me driving all that 70+ miles in the rain under a dark grey sky was not just the lobster but Kevin Costner… oh, throw in Paul Newman as well.

Here’s the place at the end of a long and winding road along coastal Maine in fading daylight:

A view from the dock:

Inside the bar, a movie poster:

and some production photos (See Paul Newman in the middle?)

Since it was getting late, we decided to take out instead of eat there. And so we did, heading out to our rental car with two cooked live lobsters (oxymoron?), drawn butter, paper plates, and a lobster cracker kindly thrown in for us, all for $30. Not a bad deal.

Just as we congratulated ourselves on our triumphal exit with lobsters and Costner poster photo, we saw the iPhone on which we’d so depended for its GPS to be not in service. Now we had to find our way out of this remote place before darkness totally engulfed us. It’s not as easy as you might think. It felt like forever for us to find our way back to the main road and headed north for another 40 miles to our motel in Rockport. It seemed a much longer drive when you had two cooked live lobsters in the back seat.

Another seafood restaurant I can whole-heartedly recommend is Archer’s on the Pier in Rockland, ‘the lobster capital of the world’. Just a 12-minute drive south of our motel in Rockport, Archer’s lobster is one of the best I’ve tasted for as long as I can remember. Of course a bit pricier than Costner’s place, but well worth it with all the extras, corn cob, coleslaw…

the location and the view:

I haven’t seen much fall foliage yet but that’s ok. It’s been a delicious journey so far.

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McFarland, USA (2015): A Worthy Winner

The reason I waited till now to see McFarland, USA is plainly because I thought it would be just another cliché movie on teacher inspiring students, and specifically here, a white teacher coming into a hispanic community, changing their youngsters to what they’re not, the white knight of condescension.

I’m glad that’s all a misconstrued perception. True, there’s a white teacher coming into the poorest town in the USA, McFarland, CA, where most of its population is hispanic, Mexican immigrants labouring in the open fields from morn till dusk picking produce. The hope of the parents’ – if there is any – is for their sons to continue picking produce so they can earn a living for themselves.

What’s best about this movie is that it’s a true story. The script is well-written and the production helmed by a competent director Niki Caro (North Country, 2005; Whale Rider, 2002). While its elements seem like the ingredients of a formulaic teacher changing students feel-good movie, it is surprisingly moving and exceeds my expectation.

Sure, the coach can’t be more white… a Mr. Jim White (Kevin Costner) from Idaho. You can’t find a whiter name. The school is McFarland High School, with low morales and expectations, students from blue-collar Mexican immigrant families. We see Mr. White come to McFarland after some unsuccessful employment at another school. Bringing his wife Cheryl (Maria Bello) and two daughters Julie (Morgan Saylor) and Jamie (Elsie Fisher) with him, White soon finds they are a misfit and maybe even unsafe in the town. Yet, he has no choice; this is his only job offer.

McFarland 1

Hired as a biology and gym teacher, White one day discovers some of his boys are fast long-distance runners. There are the Diaz boys, David (Rafael Martinez), Damacio (Michael Auguero), and Danny (Ramiro Rodriguez, well, maybe not all of them fast) who are waken up by their mother every morning before dawn to go work in the fields before they head to school. Their only way to get to school on time from the field is by running fast. And then there’s Carlos Valles (Carlos Pratts), whose athletic talent is marred by family and personal conflicts.

White sees the potentials in these boys. With no experience whatsoever, he asks for permission to set up a seven-member cross country running team and train the boys for competition. Being the newest team, they have to compete against well-trained and formidable upper-middle-class schools from areas such as Palo Alto. Physical endurance comes much easier than when the McFarland boys have to deal with low self-image and discouragement.

Kevin Costner is the key to the success of the movie. I can’t think of any other actor who is more suitable for the role. Costner is a natural, even without the chance of him pitching a baseball, even having him ride a girl’s Barbie bike (White’s daughter’s apparently) to keep up with the boys in their practice, as he’s just a bit over-the-hill to run with them. A charmer and very convincing here, Costner shows genuine concern for the welfare of his students, even going to the fields to pick produce with them to make up for the time when he takes them out for practice. He soon wins the hearts of the parents and their community.

The movie captures my attention from the very start, any resistance is soon melted by Costner’s performance, and the natural appearance of the students and their families. Most of them are first time actors, and some are residents of McFarland. One soon finds that it’s not a white knight rescuing the underprivileged, but life-changing for them all. The movie sheds no traces of racism or condescension, but paints a realistic picture of family, community and the humanity that binds.

If you want to avoid spoilers here we have the historical facts in the following:

The triumph comes in the final act of the movie when the McFarland Cross Country Team The Cougars won the California States championship in 1987, and subsequently, a total of nine wins over the next fourteen years. And to his credit, White turned down an offer from a Palo Alto high school to stay where he was, at McFarland.

What is most moving is the final text shown on screen telling how the boys had turned out in real life. All of them have no family member who had gone past a grade 9 education, but all seven of them in the cross country team graduated from college. Some of them had gone back to teach at McFarland High School, one became a police detective, one a writer for the L.A. Times. We see their faces as adults, the fruits of everyone’s labour at McFarland.

The triumph of the movie is in its authenticity and uplifting ending. Uplifting because it’s a true story. Of course, the filmmakers have to tweak and add in dramatic elements to turn it into a watchable movie, but the basic facts remain intact. I can’t remember being so moved by a Disney movie. Kudos to the McFarland community for the inspiration.

~ ~ ~ Ripples

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CLICK HERE to watch a featured video of the movie.

Here’s a “History vs. Hollywood” comparison.

Field of Dreams: Baseball for the uninitiated?

Saw Field of Dreams (1989) on AMC last night, and this time, it hit me harder. Watching the movie again has stirred up some ripples, deeply and belatedly. To say that Field of Dreams is about baseball is like saying Cinderella Man is about boxing. Movies like these speak to us not because we are necessarily sport enthusiasts, baseball or boxing fans, but that we, every one of us, belong to a family, or at least in memory, and that we are a part of the human race.

By heeding a voice telling him to build a baseball field in his cornfield, Ray Kinsella unknowingly began a journey of reconciliation. Using baseball as a springboard, and through the characters and the ingenious twists in the story, the movie leads its viewers, who are as unknowing as Ray, to taste the almost mythical reality of dreams fulfilled, past yearnings realized, and lost relationships redeemed. The film satisfies by simply portraying the very possibilities that these miracles can happen.

It is because of these universal themes that the film can reach far beyond nationalities and borders. In fact, the original story is not written by an American. The movie is based on the book Shoeless Joe, which is written by a Canadian author, W. P. Kinsella. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Kinsella used to teach English at the University of Calgary. (I still remember listening and taping his interview on a CBC radio program…oh, those were the days.) Among the numerous awards and nominations the movie has garnered including an Oscar Best Picture nomination, it won the 1991 “Best Foreign Film” category in the Awards of the Japanese Academy.

Critics who love to associate Kevin Costner only with Waterworld should at least remember that, he is the man who brought us such American modern classics as Field of Dreams and Dances with Wolves….all other failings are forgiven, easily.

~~~3 Ripples

Mr. Brooks

Mr. Brooks (2007)– What a departure from his past filmography! Mr. Brooks is Kevin Costner’s attempt to cross the great divide, from the heroic and noble to the villainous, from Eliot Ness, Mafia annihilator to Earl Brooks, serial killer. Wait, did he cross that divide or has he got one foot on each side, straddling in a precarious position with shifting identity? Maybe that’s the point this movie is trying to get across. Mr. Brooks is a successful businessman, philanthropist, loving husband and father, and at the same time, serial killer. What an interesting theme to explore, but ironically, the purpose seems to be marred by the attempts at making it work. The film itself is a schizophrenic struggle between classic Hitchcockian psychological thriller and dark humor with a contemporary flare, thanks to comedian Dane Cook fanning the flame. William Hurt’s role as Brooks’ alter ego also is both effective and self-defeating. At times he is the tempter, at other times he is the companion and friend, still other times he is the clairvoyant, predicting the future…Seems like he too has crossed that line from reality to fantasy. The action sequence though is crisp and captivating, particularly in the kidnapping scene of detective Tracy Atwood, played by Demi Moore. Unfortunately, the intersection of Costner and Moore is a story line that the film fails to dwell into, one that could enhance both character development and certainly thicken the plot. Such lack is compensated by the twists in the story, and the ending is thought provoking. Mr. Costner, nice try at being nasty, but somehow your look and demeanor betray your attempt. This movie makes me appreciate all the more the many heroic and redemptive roles you have played in the past. Having said that, I look forward to the new turn of film making you’re venturing out into and I must say, for love of the game, go for it.

~~1/2 Ripples