Finding The Way Back: A Bit of Hope in Troubled Times
This isn't a eulogy for the theater-going experience—at least I hope it’s not—it's more of a place marker.
It turns out the Ben-Affleck-as-an-alcoholic-coach-for-a-high-school-basketball-team movie plays part in a crucial moment in my life.
Six weeks ago now, the final movie I watched before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the closing of all non-essential businesses around the country, including movie theaters, was The Way Back. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a tiny blip on the scale of the truly bad things that are happening and will happen globally because of this pandemic. Just as a matter of perspective, I’m healthy and working (at work, which is a concern for another time), and my family members and friends are doing as well as they can be. But, I miss movie theaters. It’s a selfish thought, without a doubt.
I can’t help thinking that just before everything shut down I was watching Dazed and Confused on 35mm the same day I finally caught Portrait of a Lady on Fire, each beautiful experiences in their own right—I also saw the Harrison Ford snow dog movie and Bloodshot that day too, both of those having a lesser impact, but let’s move on... Like many, going out to see a movie isn’t just a mindless diversion for me, it’s a part of who I am. I have countless of favorite movie theater memories; midnight premieres, film fest screenings, retro 35mm showings, with friends and without—but mostly without, to be honest—most of my best moments took place in the dark watching a movie.
In early February of this year, I finally published my long-delayed Top 10 List of 2019. I made my passion clear:
“By the end of the year, the idea of going out to watch a movie became important to me. A movie speaks for itself, no matter the format and presentation, but the ritual of sitting down to watch a movie on a huge screen, with a group of strangers, became just a little more special, a little more precious, because it felt like the tide was turning. A legitimate fear ran through my mind: Just how much longer will the theatrical experience last? But maybe I’m just being overly paranoid… Who knows, but I’ll cherish it while it lasts.”
I said the above in regards to the rapidly changing theatrically landscape, in part because of Netflix and the surge of streaming platforms growing more and more popular, eroding theatrical exhibition. I had no idea what was on the horizon. I might have only started reading about China and their dealing with the coronavirus and the shutting down of entire cities, but, foolishly, I never imagined it would affect us stateside. I mean, really, we should have all known how serious this was sooner, and now we’re all going to have to deal with the severity of it in the weeks and months to come.
The writing was clearly on the wall in the days leading up to every theater closing in Austin, TX and beyond. No Time to Die—the long-anticipated-by-me entry in the beloved-by-me James Bond franchise—was pushed back several months and SXSW 2020 was cancelled—the film festival I was set to cover on the ground for Talk Film Society. “Just how much longer will the theatrical experience last?” That ridiculous line just kept running through my head.
Walking out of The Way Back on that fateful day, after getting a few pumps of hand sanitizer from the newly-hung dispenser outside of the theater, I checked my phone and saw the news that all movie theaters were closing the next day. It was then that I realized I made sure the latest Gavin O'Connor-Ben Affleck collabo would be on my mind for perhaps longer than it would have under normal circumstances.
The Way Back is certainly not a bad movie by any means; it’s firmly a basketball drama, focused on a coach who battles his own personal demons. Affleck plays Jack Cunningham, an alcoholic who gets called upon to coach the same Catholic high school basketball team he played on. It wouldn’t be a basketball drama without a ragtag team of teenage basketball players, montages showing the team’s rising progress, and a coach cheering them along, on and off the court, and this movie has it all! It has heart, sure, but what stands out is Affleck’s performance, digging into his real-life problems with addiction. He puts it all on the screen, and it works to the film’s advantage, making his character’s struggles feel more real.
Rarely do we get such an honest look at addiction and recovery; The Way Back smartly shows that there is no simple fix. Jack tries to better himself by way of coaching, assuring his team gets into the playoffs. He even stops his dangerous behaviors, going from drinking sunup to sun down to putting away the bottle as his team continues its winning streak. But what he’s been pushing away seeps back into his life and he ultimately takes up old habits. The first half of the film follows standard basketball drama tropes, it even lulls its audience into believing that Jack may have handled his problems all on his own, pushing his addiction to the side. It’s not until its final act, when Jack realizes he can’t just deal with this by himself, that The Way Back becomes something special. This isn't Hoosiers. It doesn’t give you a glorified win in the end. It acknowledges that a path to recovery is there, but it’s a long, tough road. That has stuck with me. Its final message that while not everything is tied up in a pretty bow, there’s still hope.
That little bit of hope is what we need. I’d like to think the day will come when I’ll be able to once again sit in a dark room, watching a movie on a giant screen with a bunch of strangers, but be simple. We live in uncertain times, beyond the prospect of movie theaters reopening and catching up on every movie this pandemic has pushed back. It’s clear there is no easy way out, we have to make sacrifices for the betterment of the population at large, not just ourselves—social distancing works. Strangely, The Way Back, the Ben Affleck basketball drama, for me, encapsulates a lot of those ideas; it’s going to be a long, tough road, but the glimmers of hope haven’t escaped me.
