High Flying Bird in Three Point Harmony
Leave it to Steven Soderbergh to make a sports movie without any sport being played. A basketball movie where no basketball is played. This is a film about the game on top of the game. It is a bold choice and Soderbergh, with his rapid paced editing style seems perfect for the job. While not entirely successful, the film is compelling and sometimes thrilling. It ultimately fails to fill the vacuum of no actual basketball played with a tangible game between player and business.
Based upon a story from its lead Andre Holland and written by playwright Terrance Alvin McCraney (In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue), we are shown this uber-game from sports agent, Ray Burke. The film opens with Burke and his new client and number one draft pick, Erick Scott (Melvin Gregg) sitting in a restaurant with a view from the top of a high rise building. I’ve not taken to Andre Holland easily. I’ve seen him in American Horror Story, Black or White, and Castle Rock but never cared for him.
While I recognize that his role in Black or White was a thankless role and it isn’t easy bringing humanity to the irredeemable and he nearly did, I’ve remained unimpressed. He’s won me over with his performance as Ray, a role designed by him to properly showcase him. Ray sits in the restaurant atop of the world and takes his young client to task for the bad financial decisions he’s made.
We learn this number one draft pick isn’t playing or getting paid at present because of an NBA lockout. His lecture, largely wasted on an unwilling student, ends in he handing the waiter his credit card that he soon learns has been canceled. Forced to pay cash for the meal, Ray walks back to work where we first meet his soon to be ex-assistant Sam (Zazie Beetz), informing him that his supervisor Zachary Quinto’s David Starr wants to see him. Holland enters Starr’s office looking like a man about to be fired.
He is not fired, but the effects of the lockout appear to have left Ray in a tenuous position. McCraney has us follow him through a series of scenes that at times almost nearly resemble the fast paced action of a basketball game. I’m not clear on whether Soderbergh was attempting to emulate the game and ultimately fails or it fails because it’s my imposition on the film never realized. At times it almost seems as if these business deals, and charitable events for business deals, are various strategies of play. Particularly the full court press, where Andre is forced to play his game down the sidelines.
The closest the film comes to an actual game of basketball being played is at a local neighborhood charity event for a youth basketball program run by the gruff and great (Bill Duke’s) Spencer. The scene is central to the film in that it gets to the heart of its premise; the love of the game is greater than the business of the game. Ray, forced to cover for the tardy Erick gives a speech telling the kids he became an agent because of the love of the game. He then cautions the kids in attendance on the importance of preparation for whatever comes because of that love of the game.
Prior to this important scene we’ve been treated to shorter scenes that could easily be interpreted as fake-out passes, no look passes and easy layups. Erick is manipulated by Sam, which appears to be the receipt of a no look pass from Ray, into a social media war with another rookie player. She coaxes out of him a boast that he could beat Darius (Caleb McLaughlin) in a street game. Sam tweets this boast on Erick’s social media feed. Then once Erick finally shows to the charity event and is signing autographs, Darius and his mother (Jeryl Prescott) soon show up to meet the challenge.
At last, it appears as if we will finally be treated to a basketball game. The kids break out their cell phones ready to record this game. Without apology the scene is over and we’re now in the present of the aftermath of this game. Now uploaded and viral on the internet, we never get to see the game. I suspect Soderbergh was attempting to offer a film without it that still looks like it. It doesn’t always look like it and ultimately its ending far more surprising (and a little confusing) than any come from behind upset of an actual game.
While Melvin Gregg as Erick is fine, he spends much of his time with Sam and Zazie Beetz is very good. She deftly plays a player in the midst of a betrayal of her mentor (Ray) while remaining fiercely loyal to him. Sonja Sohn is also great as Myra, the players representative in this “labor” dispute. I place quotes around that word because it is strange to categorize players as “labor.” They are artists in their own right, and their relationship between they and those that pay them has always been more about better players able to negotiate better contracts than a typical labor/management paradigm tends to work.
I would suggest the players are more modern day gladiators than representative of labor but that metaphor runs afoul of Spencer’s admonition and expectation of repentance for linking basketball to slavery. The love of the game, after all, has nothing to do with slavery, but instead high flying birds. Ironically, this title is not alluding to a basketball player metaphor but referencing a blues song by Billy Edd Wheeler. A song of someone watching a high flying bird while he himself is rooted aground chained to the bench. It is a metaphor for Ray Burke, who loved to play basketball and now is stuck watching that game while he struggles playing the counter-intuitive game on top of the game.