I’m from Massachusetts, and I can appreciate a surprise win by an underdog Boston sports team. When the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, that was memorable. That was history. But the significance of the 1968 Harvard versus Yale football game, on the other hand, is arguable, and director Kevin Rafferty hardly makes a compelling case for it in his new documentary, “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.”
Nonfiction films follow a different agenda than fiction films, but there are certain narrative criteria necessary for documentaries. A good documentary doesn’t just relay information, it dresses up the facts in a way that captures our imagination. Some kind of intriguing event is crucial, a controversy is always a plus and the prospect of heretofore-unseen evidence adds a bit of necessary suspense. And it is nice to have a conclusion — not because the story is actually over, but because stories need to end.
The final game between two undefeated Ivy League sports teams might be memorable to some. It is certainly memorable enough for Rafferty, who was actually in the stands, rooting for Harvard. But he treats the game as if it were a memorable event and nothing more. What is missing from the movie, and what he fails to produce, is anything to supplement or explain the game on its own terms, as a piece of sports history, rather than a rose-tinted Ivy League recollection. True sports fans might enjoy watching snippets of the match itself, but the commentary by Don Gillis is entirely unmoving. As a result, Rafferty doesn’t tell a story for the people who weren’t there.
A movie about sports should focus on sports. This film is, more often than not, merely a bunch of 60 year olds struggling to recall what exactly was going on during the fateful 1968 game. Even worse (and perhaps crucially so), Rafferty’s questions are desperately and unsubtly aimed at sparking celebrity name recognition. One former Yale player notes in passing that his girlfriend at the time was Meryl Streep, and so a whole minute is devoted to zooming on a photograph to prove that yes, in fact, this is Meryl Streep when she was younger. Another Yale alumnus recalls that George W. Bush was once his roommate, a fact that is amusing but ends up completely irrelevant to the story. Tommy Lee Jones, who was on the Harvard team, does his best to act like the game was legendary, pausing dramatically for minutes at a time and wearing a grave expression, but he is the only interview subject who seems put off by Rafferty’s obvious celebrity worship, becoming visibly confused by the constant, probing questions about his then-roommate Al Gore.
The movie does succeed with one shout-out: “Doonesbury” comic creator Garry Trudeau. Though all of the former players have little, if anything, to say about him in their current commentary, they explain that the Yale football team was the basis for Trudeau’s early strips. That concept helps shed more light on the idiosyncratic nature of the team and its players — in other words, it does what Rafferty should be trying to do. Otherwise, the director’s questions are unfocused and off-topic.
In general, the filming and the editing are hopelessly amateurish, aggrandizing the game in lame, artificial ways. Rafferty chooses to splice in quotes and slow down footage to dramatically reshape an event that requires no editing. It is wasteful and unnecessary filmmaking, constantly reminding us that it would probably be better to watch this one on ESPN Classic.
Abe Fried-Tanzer is a staff writer. E-mail him at film@nyunews.com.
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