Murderball

This past weekend I went to see a "film". I say "film" instead of "movie" because I'm sure the people I saw it with would take offense - we saw it downtown, in one of those places that's supposed to be more authentic because the chairs are 20 years old and everyone's wearing dark-rimmed glasses. Before the "film" they showed a "short" in black and white and french, which I think they do in places like that to make suburban people like me confused and leave so that the elitists can watch their "film" in the luxurious privacy of their own cigarette smoke. We weren't fooled (although we did walk in and out of the theater a few times, just to make sure we were in the right place) so we gritted our teeth through 10 minutes of pretentious previews for weird "films" from the Cannes or Sundance festivals, and made it to the main event.

The main event was a documentary called Murderball about rugby players - quadriplegic rugby players. The film's website summarizes it far better than I could:

"Featuring fierce rivalry, stopwatch suspense, and larger-than-life personalities, MURDERBALL, Winner of the Documentary Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for Editing at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, is a film about tough, highly competitive rugby players. Quadriplegic rugby players. Whether by car wreck, fist fight, gun shot, or rogue bacteria, these men were forced to live life sitting down. In their own version of the full-contact sport, they smash the hell out of each other in custom-made gladiator-like wheelchairs. And no, they don't wear helmets.

From the gyms of middle America to the Olympic arena in Athens, Greece, MURDERBALL tells the story of a group of world-class athletes unlike any ever shown on screen. In addition to smashing chairs, it will smash every stereotype you ever had about the disabled. It is a film about family, revenge, honor, sex (yes, they can) and the triumph of love over loss. But most of all, it is a film about standing up, even after your spirit - and your spine - has been crushed."

It's pretty amazing and very...authentic. Three people followed several of the players around for a year or so and filmed different things happening in their lives. The players themselves seem completely comfortable on camera, better than some actors I've seen, supposedly because their condition left them so amazingly vulnerable for a time that during rehab they lost most all pretence of being someone who they aren't.

The movie is surprisingly un-santized. The characters are very real - to the point that you completely forget about their handicap - but not "nice" and "innocent" the way Hollywood tends to portray the disabled. They're very real characters going through very real and difficult issues often not directly related to their paralysis. It's as if the disability has put a magnifying glass over their issues, bringing out their problems and forcing them to deal with it. I was surprised to see that the most disabled character in the film, a many who lost his arms and legs below the elbow/knee when he was 9, is by far the most mentally healthy human being of the group.

I highly recommend it for anyone over the age of 14.