All that can be heard in the opening moments of MurderBall are the ambient sounds of Mark Zupan getting himself into his wheelchair, lifting his body and legs into place, and the sound of a compressor. In some ways, the opening images of MurderBall or Quadriplegic Rugby are deceiving. You might imagine a very different scenario for a documentary that follows Mark’s life.
MurderBall – 2005 – Think Film/MTV/1 More film – 88 minutes. Directed by Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro.
MurderBall focuses on the USA Quadriplegic Rugby team’s path to the 2004 Olympics in Greece, their rivalry with the Canadian team, its coach Joe Soares, and the US Quad Rugby players. The film’s pace does not slacken as it takes you with these warriors on their quest to win the Olympic Gold in Athens.
In the opening scenes, you quickly get to know several players through their words and actions and from interviews with their friends and families. The sport of wheelchair rugby is highly competitive, as are the participants. The rivalry between the USA and Canada is intensified by the animosity of the US team members toward Joe Soares, an ex-U.S. player who has “defected” to become the coach of the Canadian team. This angst is even more evident after the US team, undefeated in eleven years, loses a game to the Canadian team, coached by Soares, in Vancouver. After the game, one of the US players asks Soares, “how it feels to be a traitor to his country?”
One of the unique aspects of this documentary is that you are drawn into the players’ lives and given an understanding of their disability in a non-condescending fashion. Instead, there is empathy and respect for these athletes who have overcome adversity and ask for no sympathy. This documentary is about a sport and athletes who have overcome adversity to play it.
Murderball is a documentary; nonfiction is structured like an action/drama fiction film and is scripted in three acts. The rivalry between the two teams, the US players versus Joe Soares and the Canadians, gives us clear a protagonist and antagonist. Joe Soares’s aggressive and often insensitive behavior makes him the person to dislike, although, toward the middle of the film, he does get some redeeming value when he attends his non-jock son’s concert. Another, more subtle antagonist in the movie is the personal physical limitations the athletes must overcome to play this contact sport.
Murder Ball was nominated for an Oscar as Best Documentary Film and has an impressive list of awards, including one for editing. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436613/awards
Review by James R Martin
“Murder Ball directed by Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro, produced by Jeffrey Mandel and Shapiro, photographed by Rubin, works like many great documentaries to transcend its subject and consider the human condition.” – Roger Ebert – July 22, 2005
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Recent Books by James R Martin available on Amazon.com
Documentary Directing and Storytelling – How to direct documentaries and more.
The purpose of this book is to offer a learning experience and an exploration into directing documentary story projects. Secondly, to provide fundamental and advanced ideas about actuality documentary filmmaking and nonfiction storytelling of all types using film, video, multimedia and other mediums. There are numerous critical reviews of documentary films and the stories they tell from a directing and filmmaking perspective. Understanding the storytelling structure of certain documentary directing styles helps in learning and building a personal directing approach. The best directors understand the traditions and aesthetics of the medium in which they are working. They also have an understanding of the crafts involved and may have worked at some of those jobs themselves. The focus of this book is on directing, but it also includes information that experienced directors should know about the process of constructing a documentary story. Finally, this book is a great read for anyone with a strong interest in documentary or nonfiction storytelling.
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