"God Wants You on the Floor"

Often considered the best basketball film ever made, and they might be right, at least if one doesn't count a documentary such as "Hoop Dreams" (1994), "Hoosiers," however, isn't effective because it's a sports movie so much as it's because it's a Christian one. Something about the 1980s, perhaps, as there seemed to be a few such spiritual sports flicks: "Chariots of Fire" (1981), "The Natural" (1984), "Field of Dreams" (1989). None of those are quite as fervent in their conviction, though, and are largely about other things, too, whether religious freedom, patriotism, daddy issues, capitalism, or what have you. The only other film I've seen since that approaches such reverence is Spike Lee's "He Got Game" (1998). There, it's the last temptation of Christ. Here, it's David and Goliath. Both are tales of redemption and masculinity, with "Hoosiers" uniting that more to divine grace.

It's apt, especially being set in Indiana, a state known for its devotion to the game--particularly its high-school tournament. Wikipedia even has a page for "Hoosier Hysteria." Indeed, the film is loosely based on a small-town team that won the championship in 1954. Usually, it seems sports fanaticism is treated as a displaced, secular religiosity. The passion that unifies communities where once a church might have; after all, many a rural village will be spotted with several temples of different denominations, but only one team for a sport, and their events oft tend to be better attended. Of course, that's mythologized, too, and is why "Hoosiers" is a nostalgic look at supposed past glory, including as regards gender roles or the the absence of racial recognition even when versing their sole integrated opponent. It makes no mistake, either, that its basketball is religion--of the sort dating back to Victorian-age protestant notions of Christian manliness. The arguments between Gene Hackman's coach and Barbara Hershey's school teacher are all about this role of basketball in the community, the role of redemption, and over the masculine or feminine control of raising men--particularly concerning the education of the fatherless Jimmy between father-figure coaches, as well as the sobering of the alcoholic father played by Dennis Hopper.

Another key player is Strap, who although he ends up a reserve spending most of his time on the bench in games, is the most devout member of the team--kneeling in prayer for extended periods of time (hence the quotation placed in the headline of this review implored by the coach to get Strap on the court) and whose father drives the the team's bus because God told him to. It's through Strap that divine grace is most readily apparent as the movie moves towards montage mode with heightened dramatic music, as ecstatically scored by Jerry Goldsmith. If not for this thematic congruity, "Hoosiers" would surely be unbearably clichéd and sentimental. That's probably why the same director's, David Anspaugh, and writer's, Angelo Pizzo, overrated "Rudy" is so obnoxious, as with many other underdog, last-second-shot heroic sports flicks. Here, it works, though, because there's an underlying theology instead of merely contributing to an endless string of "Rocky" (1976) idolatry.