‘Season’ highlights female empowerment – Tear-drenched sports melodrama

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‘The Miracle Season’ is a sports film — and by that, I don’t just mean that it’s a drama sprinkled with faith-based fairy dust (though you don’t have to look hard between the lines to see that it is). I mean that it’s a movie of fundamentalist feel-good fervor.

Set in 2011, it’s based on the true story of a high-school girls’ volleyball team — the West High Trojans of Iowa City — who won the state championship two years in a row, and it’s all about how they took their inspiration from tragedy. Just as that second season was getting under way, the team’s star center and most popular player, a 17-year-old senior named Caroline Found (known by her nickname, “Line”), was killed in an accident while driving a moped. Caroline, by all accounts, was a highly adored student: fiery, virtuous, charismatic, good. Her disconsolate teammates felt that they couldn’t go on, that they couldn’t play without her. But instead, they decided to play with a vengeance. They fought their way to a second championship by honoring, and channeling, her spirit.

In “The Miracle Season,” every character and situation, every line and digression, is crafted to feed your sentimental sweet spot. There’s no jealousy or rivalry or bad vibes — anywhere in the movie. Every girl on the team is wholesome and spirited, vibrant and true; every person on screen is nice. (The movie seems to be saying: Why would there be any pettiness, any mean-girl negativity? It’s Iowa!) Caroline’s bestie, Kelly (Erin Moriarty), takes over for her as center and triumphs by finding the strength of heart to match her friend’s. And though the team takes a while to get its mojo back, once they start winning they’re unstoppable.

Even if you see through the benign (manipulative) strategies of “The Miracle Season,” which isn’t hard to do, resistance is futile. You will surrender. You’ll feel the tear on your cheek, the lump in your throat, the reverent huggy glory of it all. “The Miracle Season” is a movie guided by a higher power, and that power is the film’s sacramental devotion to getting a rise out of you.

Does that mean it’s a dishonest movie? Yes and no. It sticks close to the actual story of the West High Trojans, and during the real-life video footage that accompanies the end credits, we can see that the actors have done a scrupulous job of capturing the spirit of the people they’re playing: William Hurt as Caroline’s benevolently crusty widowed father, Dr. Ernie Found (who lost his wife to illness shortly after Caroline’s death), and Helen Hunt as the coach, Kathy Bresnahan (known as Brez), a solitary taskmaster who’s a good egg deep down but doesn’t believe in what you might call outward displays of emotion. Hunt, sullen and bedraggled, plays much of the movie looking as if she’d just bit into a lemon. Her Brez is a pill, a tough-love crank, yet she believes in her girls, and Hunt’s performance is cannier than you think. She doesn’t just bottle up emotion; she saves it for the end — and when it comes out, this dyspeptic soul suddenly seems touched by grace.

Yet even if you’re moved by it, there’s no denying that “The Miracle Season” is such a formula film. The Trojans, thrown off their game by Caroline’s death, lose a number of matches early on in the season; this means that after a certain point, they’ll have to win 15 games in a row or they’ll be out of the running. That doesn’t exactly create timeless sports-movie suspense.

Reward

If the volleyball matches were thrillingly staged, they might be their own reward. Yet right up until the championship game (which is exciting), the director, Sean McNamara, smashes the contests into generic athletic-video fragments. Few sports you could think of possess the flow of volleyball — the continuity of movement is built right into the sport’s name — but “The Miracle Season,” instead of tracing the gathering energy of volleys, reduces the game to a single element: power. The moments when the balls are pounded across the net like bullets. Volleyball is about power, but it’s also about the call and response of teamwork, which in “The Miracle Season” is mostly an abstraction.

Caroline Found, played with plucky spontaneity by Danika Yarosh, isn’t on screen for long, but her presence hovers over the movie. The notion that even after her death, she’s still there, and that the team remains in communion with her by playing to win, doing what Line would do, is treated in all-American terms. Caroline’s ailing mother (Jillian Fargey) gazes at her photograph at the wake and says that they’ll soon be reunited, and she insists on getting out of her wheelchair and walking. Symbolic snow angels figure big in the movie.

Also:

LOS ANGELES: Cast members of “The Miracle Season” say the film’s female-empowerment message couldn’t have come at a better time.

The movie follows the true story of Iowa City’s West High volleyball team, which reached the state championships after the death of teammate Caroline “Line” Found.

Erin Moriarty, one of the stars of the film, says the theme of women working together to achieve a goal is particularly important in the era of #MeToo, with women in Hollywood and elsewhere organizing to eradicate sexual misconduct.

“I feel like the movement with what’s going on in Hollywood right now, in addition to this film, kind of really emphasizes the concept that if we’re all in it together, life is going to be so much easier,” said Moriarty. “And we’ve got to assume these roles of strength that are equal to men.”

Danika Yarosh, who also stars in the movie, is optimistic about workplace parity in Hollywood and beyond.

“I think a lot of Hollywood is going through a change right now, especially with representation,” she said. “There’s more females going into the workforce and being recognized, and I think that’s really, really great, and I’m excited to see what this next year and the years after that will bring.” (Agencies)

Helen Hunt, who plays the coach of the team, says the message behind the movie hit home after filming started in Vancouver, Canada.

“I didn’t realize when I took the job what I was going to be doing on that level. I just loved the director (Sean McNamara) and I thought it seemed like a good part and would be a beautiful place to shoot. But I remembered very clearly standing on this volleyball court, looking around at these beautiful souls staring at me like I’m supposed to know what to say to them, and luckily a really good writer told me to say, ‘I love you and recognize what you did and have joy.’ It was pretty perfect,” she said before a special screening in Los Angeles recently.

Hunt said her teenage daughter was inspired by spending time with the film’s young stars.

“Being around sweet, lovely women following what they want to do … it was a beautiful way to spend a summer,” she said. “They all came around her like fairies in the woods. It was pretty beautiful.”

Moriarty hopes “The Miracle Season” will open the door for more female-driven stories in Hollywood.

“I don’t like that this film is the anomaly right now — that we have this movie coming out about female athletes at such a young age and it’s rare. But I’m happy that we’re getting out there and I hope that this catalyzes more stories like that,” said Moriarty.

“The Miracle Season” opened in the United States on Friday. (Agencies)

By Owen Gleiberman

 

 

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