Dutch coach Thomas Rongen attempts the nearly impossible task of turning the American Samoa soccer team from perennial losers into winners.
10 Apr Next Goal Wins (2023)
Faʻafafine
Oh gosh, such a tired story. A weak sports team, including troubled youngsters in need of a father figure. A talented but haunted coach, reluctantly assigned, comes around to adopt the team. Success! Personal fulfilment. I cannot say how many times this film has been made, but I’ve seen a half dozen.
So why would a successful filmmaker — he is now — come to this? Clearly it is because he wants to celebrate Samoan culture, which surely is appealing. The sport saga is reframed to having our troubled American serve as surrogate where he first has key elements ‘explained’, then experienced, then embraced.
Sometimes, you have a throwaway vehicle. I wouldn’t have watched this if I weren’t curious about Taika, who plays a nearly inexplicable framing role. That role is so strange it is worth a remark.
Samoa is a group east of Melanesia, remote enough to have its own culture. All these islands were messed around through colonisation, great power war, and in retrospect profoundly damaging missionaries. So what we have is a literally American island distinct from Samoa, that has Christian twists. Why Taika’s character is so curious, is that he speaks directly to us as a preacher in European ceremonial garb as fuffed up by Calvinists.
So we have these layers of narrator: us as presumably Anglicised viewers who would find this culture inspirational. A somewhat comical minister. A senior native who pretty much runs everything on the island, including the team.
And then there’s Jaiyah, a member of the team and their spiritual centre — a faʻafafine — what we’d call a non-binary. Here, they are using modern medicine to transition, but it is in a tradition of accepted roles, a bit magical.
Overall, the cost is high, because of the ordinariness of the story vehicle, and the conventional marks that have to be met. Too high for me to recommend this outright. But I can celebrate this quite natural flow of roles, identity, and culture.
Posted in 2024
Ted’s Evaluation — 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
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