Word: hoops
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...wonders and we wonder. The scene is from Steve James, Frederick Marx, and Peter Gilbert's brilliant documentary "Hoop Dreams," a lyrical meditation on basketball, ambition and the depravity of inner-city life. Gates is one of the film's truth-tellers. He is aware--if only at moments--of the terrible burden of potential and its cruel habit of leaving behind a trail of unfulfilled dreams and unrealized promise...
...movie's message is timely, given America's recent political swing to the Right. Any film about inner-city deprivation confronts head-on the issues that Clinton put to Congress in his Crime Bill. "Hoop Dreams" actually lends validity to some of the arguments that shot down Clinton's liberalism-gone-awry "midnight basketball league" idea. If the lottery of success is so unpromising for young boys who dream of being stars, why should they be encouraged to play basketball at midnight...
Perhaps the movie implies that we shouldn't be pouring money into programs that spawn hoop dreams, breed hopeful young basketball players, and then destroy their confidence to the point that they lose self-respect and likely become resentful of the system that encouraged them. Certainly any program that provides an alternative to the streets is better than nothing, but ideally an inner-city youth program wouldn't rely on the lore of the American basketball star for its appeal...
...good thing is that none of these questions is posited outright. The text of the film does not include the discourse of politics; it is simply the talk of daily life. And, in fact, "Hoop Dreams" was not made with film but rather with high-quality video, with no pretense of artistic ingenuity. It is the medium of video which allowed the filmmakers to take five years of footage on such a small budget, and perhaps video proved the most appropriate format for a documentary that needn't be clouded over with aesthetic concerns...
Undeniably topical, "Hoop Dreams" is not just a movie about basketball. It captivates its audience at every smooth pass and at every slam-dunk, but it is more far-reaching than the hype of a Nike commercial and vastly more politically-infused than a Duke game. See it, and see what's going...