Cinema Hype

SPOILERS AHEAD. CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED.

The news that Bend It Like Beckham is a part of my DVD collection should be a surprise to just about nobody. For one thing, I believe we’ve covered my love for sports movies. Anything that makes me want to get up and work out is fine by me, really. But Bend It Like Beckham is more than just a plain sports movie for me (aren’t all the best ones about more than sports?), which is why it deserves a prime spot on The Shelf.

What I like most about Bend It Like Beckham is that it’s more than the common story of a woman breaking tradition to pursue an athletic career. That’s part of the plot–Jess (Parminder Nagra) does want to play football–but it’s not the point. The point is that she wants to play football, but she needs to be a part of her own family, and she’s willing to give up one for the other. I like the way this storyline is emphasized by Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyer)’s estrangement from his father: he has football, sort of, but that’s all he has. In the end, it’s a movie about a woman figuring out what will make her really happy–and football isn’t necessarily it. It’s a nice change.

I remember walking out of the theater after Bend It Like Beckham and thinking that it was a supremely emotional movie. All of the characters here are ruled by their hearts more than their heads–Jess, certainly, but also Jules (Keira Knightley), Joe, and Mr. Bhamra (Anupam Kher)–to the extent that the movie is very much about interaction and reaction rather than football or any other kind of action. It’s about assumptions and misunderstandings, and about the emotional state of the main character. When Jess fails, her failure isn’t about what she lost–usually something minor anyway, really–but about her own disappointment and frustration. Similarly, when she wins, it’s never just a football game. When she fights with Jules, we feel it. When Joe runs through the airport gate (in his black jeans and distracting white tennis shoes) to say goodbye, we feel it. Whatever happens to Jess,
director Gurinder Chadha seems intent on amplifying the effect until we feel it ourselves. Somehow, it works.

The climax scene in Bend It Like Beckham isn’t so much a scene as a long musical montage. This sounds like a terrible idea–musical montages often are–but it works here. It’s both a reference to Bollywood and an actual film technique: as footage of Jess’s football game and Pinky (Archie Panjabi)’s wedding are spliced together, both events come across as beautiful and satisfying in their own ways. The dancing and the jostling of the football game, both set to Indian pop and opera, are colorful and filled with motion, and Chadha does a nice job of setting the two side by side. She finds visually interesting ways to link the two sisters’ very different destinies in the minds of the audience. At the climax, neither of them is doing something better than the other. They’ve both won. It’s a beautiful sequence.

Last but not least, the DVD special features are excellent; my favorite is the cooking show with Chadha making aloo gobi. Nice touch. Because anybody can make aloo gobi (not true, by the way), but who can bend a ball like Beckham?