Release Date: 13 September 2002
Director: Tim Blake Nelson
Brief Synopsis:
Tough Coach Duke Goulding leaves nothing untried to lead his almost exclusively white boarding school basketball team, the Hawks, to victory after victory, but his own son Hugo feels his polyvalent technical excellence and tireless efforts -which require using stimulants- are not getting anything like the recognition he deserves, especially when coach gives the best player award to Odin James, the only black teammate, even saying he loves Odin like his own son, who in turn only calls super-rich Michael Cassio to share in the honour. So Hugo, who is liked by everyone, decides to set up the boys who stole his glory, and he knows a cocky adolescent's weak points are his pride and his girl. This Dixie Jago schemes to bring down a black Othello and his Cassius, playing into the poisonous power of jealousy, however badly this also hurts their loved ones and the whole team
Analysis of opening minutes:
The film opens with quiet calming music and an out of focus close up on white doves. Doves are a symbol of freedom and innocence so this makes the audience question what the film is going to be like. The film still being on the birds with the music a voice over starts with a boy saying ‘All my life I always wanted to fly, I wanted to live like a hawk. I know your not supposed to be jealous of anything but to take flight , to soar above everything and everyone, now that’s living.’ This tells the audience so much even though we’ve only seen white doves so far. It automatically makes the film emotional within feelings and questioning what the main character is going to be like. The words show that the character is trapped and is jealous of people with freedom but we still don’t know. From this calm and peaceful scene, as soon as the voice over finishes loud screams and cheers from a crowd start with a close up on a hawk. The hawk then flies across a crowd to an extreme close up of what we can assume is the main character. The mise en scene tells us everything we need to know which lets us in on what’s happening at this moment. We’ve seen the loud shouting crowd and the main character has beads of sweat on his face and a basket ball top on, we also hear the manager giving a team talk. This tells us that the scene is the middle or half time of a basket ball match. There is then a master shot of the manager talking to the whole of the team. We can see from this that the main character we have just been introduced to is the only character within the group who is a different race. As the audience, this makes us question if that is what the freedom the voice over was talking about. I think the opening minutes of this film are very powerful and you can tell the film is going to be very strong. I like the idea of the beginning with the voice over then to the contrast of the loud basket ball match.
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