McConaugheMay Day 23: We Are Marshall

Dad cinema personified. I have a vague memory of watching this in middle or high school in some class or another. It seems like very hungover teacher vibes, which has been a strangely consistent trend in this month's batch of McConaugheMovies. It's interesting that here, he co-stars alongside Matthew Fox, who he appeared in the same movie with (although not in the same scene) in My Boyfriend's Back. What does it mean? Does it mean anything?

Based on a true story, We Are Marshall follows the few members of the Marshall University football team who did not board the plane that killed nearly the entire team in 1970. As the town struggles to grieve through their trauma, some choose to put all their focus into restoring the football team by negotiating with the NCAA about rules and regulations, recruiting new talent, and bringing the town together with a can-do spirit.

Personally, I have never cared for college sports, when I was in college or otherwise, and the cult of football only appeals to me insofar as I grew up watching the Eagles (go birds) with my family from Philly and I enjoyed the rough and tumble vibe of that team and the short, easy-to-follow season of the NFL. I don't know how a football game could unite a town after tragedy tore it apart, but I don't know a lot of things. Matthew McConaughey plays a renegade coach brought in to use his off-the-wall ideas and unflagging spirit to get the team into fighting shape and restore the town’s hope.

It’s not a bad use of the actor’s natural charm and charisma, but the movie’s core premise still nagged at me. Was immediately restarting the football team that killed over a dozen young people really the best way to help a town grieve such a horrible event? Even the film doesn’t seem to land on a true answer until the very end; one compelling subplot seems to be about a woman whose boyfriend dies and is pushed by the boy’s father to move on and seek new love in a new town. The more complicated emotions that she might have are papered over when contrasted with the big game that the whole town flocks to as she has her moment of truth. But this was based on a true story and made with the explicit support of many of the real life people that the film is based on, so who am I to judge another’s grieving process? If it worked for them, I can’t blame the language of cinema for making that story feel like artifice.

The real life Matthew McConaughey hoped to go pro in football until a knee injury pushed him toward acting, a real-life event loosely adapted for his character in Two for the Money. Does this mean anything?

There's just eight days more of these movies to watch. Does this mean anything?