A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
by Sasha Stone

There is a scene in Boaz Yakin's REMEMBER THE TITANS where Coach Boone (Denzel Washington) steps out onto an empty football field, takes a look around and realizes that, for him, it's all about the game, specifically, winning the game - not about racism, not about racial harmony; moreover, he's not going to let hundreds of years of tradition get in the way of bringing his team to the state championships. They will embody perfection because that is the only way they can win.

Coach Boone has had to be perfect his whole life. He doesn't have room for weakness, not for a second. It's difficult not to separate the actor from the character as one sees a truth in what Washington as Boone is communicating here: his own need for perfection has put him at the top of his game and it's still not good enough. Washington gave the performance of his career last year in The Hurricane but was passed over for a Best Actor Oscar to the more popular Kevin Spacey.

People will debate this for years, whether or not the Academy is racist and did Spacey really deserve it over Washington? We will never know. What we do know and what's important here is that there have been so few African-American Oscar winners that it's not entirely out of line to cry foul. Others will complain that The Hurricane got bad press and that it wasn't an entirely great film. But certainly we can all agree that Washington was perfect as Hurricane Carter.

Based on real life events that took place in 1971, Remember the Titans tells the story of a black coach (Washington) who is hired on to replace the town's favorite white coach, Bill Yoast (Will Patten) when two schools in Virginia combine. But the white athletes and their fathers, knee-deep in southern racism, threaten to boycott the team, leaving Boone with only black players and not that many at that. What's interesting is how Boone tackles the problem as if the problem did not exist. He doesn't whine about it, he just treats the team like they were complete.

Conflict arises when the white players, led by a compassionate Yoast, decide that all their hard work should not go to waste and that they can all work together. The players are hoping that with one loss they can replace Boone and life will go on as usual. They don't realize they are up against perfection.

In one of Washington's better moments, the team captain Bertier (a film-stealing Ryan Hurst) and his buddy try to give Boone certain instructions, like they won't block their black teammates and that they should all just try to ignore one another. Boone answers them with public humiliation, then insists that he answer to the following question: "Who's your daddy?" "You are," Bertier admits, sheepishly.

Football camp becomes the fighting ground where the teammates either learn to play together or else be thrown off the team. Boone insists that they speak to one another, finding out facts about their lives, until they have met everyone or else he will double their practice time. Boone uses physical punishment, not peace, love and understanding, to collide the races. And it works. Until they leave football camp and return home to angry white people and defensive black people who don't have a coach forcing them to do anything because they don't have a game to unify them, who have nothing but the memory of our past which produces "whitey guilt" and understandable bitterness from blacks.

There is an attempt to put us white folks in the shoes of blacks long enough for us to feel the burn. In particular there are agonizing scenes where restaurant owners won't serve black patrons or where one of the best players is invited to dinner at his white friend's house and is standing on the street corner dressed up. A cop car rolls up to him. The window comes down and before he says anything the look on Julius' face tells us all we need to know about what that must feel like - we white guilty people, that is.

However, this is not so much a film about racism or unification as it is about the feeling of watching a team win. This one doesn't deviate much from the accepted formula of a sports movie, which will make this a not so bitter a pill to swallow for those less than enthusiastic about race relations mixed into their entertainment. The scenes of the Titans winning are as exciting as any in a sports movie. In particular, the body crunch shots are nicely done by Yakin, especially if you can't understand what's going on.

The dynamic between Boone and his team recalls the mad principle Morgan Freeman played in Lean on Me, another story based on real-life events. Both characters must almost use torture to get their students to shape up The methods are deemed controversial by all sides but the results are always applauded.

A teacher at UCLA once told me that you can be forgiven a lot if you don't screw up the key moments. Boaz Yakin doesn't drop the ball when it counts in Remember the Titans, a film that is as feel-good as they come. Some of the cutesy moments are almost too much to bear and a lot of the true problems are whitewashed, so to speak.

But ultimately, this is not a film to turn away from for any reason, but most especially because of the performances by its wonderful actors, from the always-fabulous Washington to Will Patten (who gets to play a good guy for once) to the odd quarterback from California (Kip Pardue) and down to the creepy racists who are always lurking around the corner.

Finally, one might feel the need to resent a culture that celebrates its black athletes while continuing to discriminate against its black non-athletes. But there is something almost sweet there, too, as if the game itself can erase history, perceptions, resentment and tradition. Perhaps it can't erase it, but maybe, for a time, it can suspend it. And it's worth remembering, as one character in the film points out, if blacks and whites can fight a war together they can certainly play football together. And when they play together, they win together and when they win, we all win.

CineScene, 2000