But except in certain scenes, such as a brutal alleyway beating that Berg inflicts on a homophobic teammate, a certain necessary dark fire is missing from the character and the performance, and it's hard to tell if this is due to miscasting, insufficiently imaginative writing and direction, or something else. We definitely get the sense that Berg is a restless spirit, possibly driven by a desire to prove himself to a gentile-dominated world by being smarter and more athletic than most of the goys ordering him around. Rudd does a fine job of capturing the character's casual coldness, starting in an early scene where he tells Estella that he's traveling to Japan when she says she's always wanted to see Japan, he smiles subtly and says, "I'll take pictures." And he's credible as an intellectual who holds intolerant or less-educated people in mild contempt, but manages to keep it in check when he has to. (Others have praised Rudd as Berg-and of course, your mileage will vary.) There aren't too many actors you'll watch for 98 minutes even when they're purposefully giving you very little, and I don't think Rudd, who becomes a superstar whenever he grins and delivers a deadpan wisecrack, is one of them. As many times as the supporting characters, including the adoring but frustrated Estella, describe Berg as a riddle or enigma, the character remains a closed book, a personality type that's difficult to portray, because it requires the actor to continually tease the possibility of revelation without giving audiences the answers they seek. And while Rudd is a likeable performer who turned out to have more range than anyone might have predicted from seeing him in early roles, he didn't do much for me here. Unfortunately, the film never finds a way into Berg's personality that explores his many facets without reducing him to a blank-slate character at the center of a traditionally-made period thriller.
#Baseball movie catcher movie
Berg was thought to be gay, although the movie never quite confirms that he was it shows him having sex with his girlfriend Estella Huni ( Sienna Miller) but holding hands with Kawabata, an intellectual with whom he clearly has a deeper connection.
While it seems unclear whether this was actually a precursor to Berg's espionage activities, the film treats it that way, and the trip sets up some thoughtful conversations between Berg and Japanese delegate Isao Kawabata ( Hiroyuki Sanada) about the likelihood of war between their two countries. In 1934, Berg made the second of two trips to Japan as part of a baseball players' delegation and filmed Tokyo harbor with a movie camera. Berg was described by Casey Stengel as "the strangest man ever to play baseball" and by John Kieran, a former sports columnist for the New York Times, as "The most scholarly athlete I ever knew." Born in Manhattan but raised in Newark, New Jersey, Berg graduated from Princeton-quite an accomplishment for a young Jewish man in the anti-Semitic Ivy League university system-and went on to play for a number of minor and major league teams, including the Cleveland Indians, the Washington Senators, and the Boston Red Sox.
The real-life inspiration for this character is so fascinating that if you start reading about him, you'll find yourself tumbling down one research rabbit hole after another.
0 kommentar(er)
