Worth: $16.00
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Cast:
Michael Fassbender, Oscar Kightley, Kaimana, Will Arnett, Taika Waititi, Elisabeth Moss, Uli Latukefu, Rhys Darby, Rachel House
Intro:
… there is an inclusiveness and kindness to the film …
New Zealand actor/director Taika Waititi (Hunt for the Wilderpeople, JoJo Rabbit) has a small but well-deserved cult following. His gentle self-mocking humour also leaves room for emotional resonance.
Whereas JoJo Rabbit tried for some very big themes and even flirted (in a not fully controlled way) with matters of history and high seriousness, this one is more domestic and trivial, a terrain over which Waititi is much more sure-footed.
It is set in American Samoa (yes, there are two Samoas and they are distinct from each other in ways that only locals would care about or appreciate). This tiny island nation is famous in football (soccer) terms for the worst defeat in World Cup History when they lost to Australia 31-0.
Let’s just say that the task of running the American Samoa national football team is not a job fought over by the world’s top coaches. So, when down on his luck and semi alcoholic Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) lands the job, we know that this is not a marriage made in heaven. (Rongen really had this job in real life and there is a shot of him in the end credits. For completists, there is a 2014 documentary of the same name on the subject).
American Samoa looks like heaven and the charming easy-going Samoans are likable if not exactly motivated.
The comedy rolls along in an amiable kind of Ted Lasso way, with Fassbender dialing down his star quality and being careful not to unbalance the film. For some reason, the ubiquitous Elisabeth Moss plays a small role as his estranged wife, but her only function seems to be to humiliate the already-downtrodden coach.
Waititi not only co-wrote and directed, but he is also gives himself a plumb cameo as the local clergyman. He is a skillful comic actor, and he more or less steals the scenes he is in, but never in a selfish way. A lot of the humour comes from deliberate bathos (not hard with this shambolic team), and from people vocalising an obvious but politely-avoided truth. It is a trick that rarely fails, and combined with the manifest warmth of the setting and the people, it does carry us through.
There is one extra element that deserves a mention; one of the more emotional strands in the story concerns Jaiyah (Kaimana), the team’s best player who is fa’afafine. This tolerance of gender diversity is very much in keeping with contemporary youth politics where gender non-binarism seems to have become one of the key issues of the day. In this, as in so many other aspects, there is an inclusiveness and kindness to the film that enables them to win our hearts even if they cannot win on the pitch.
