How the Goal Line Came To Replace the Color Line
It's striking how many of the images that capture America's struggle to overcome its legacy of racism come from the world of sports. Based on a real-life drama that played out in Virginia, it uses football to tell a bigger story about the American South going through the growing pains of desegregation."Remember the Titans" is a parable about racial harmony, yoked to the formula of a sports movie. Real life is never this simple, but then that's what the movies are for--to improve on life, and give it the illusion of form and purpose.
Denzel Washington and Will Patton are the stars, two football coaches, one black, one white, whose lives are linked for a season, even though neither wants it that way. Yoast's white players say they won't play for a black coach, but Yoast doesn't want them to lose college scholarships, so he swallows his pride and agrees to be Boone's assistant, leading the whites back to practice.
All of this is said to be based on life, and no doubt largely is, but life was perhaps harder and more wounding than the film.
Those training camp scenes include the usual identifiable types (the fat kid, the long-haired Californian, the "Rev") who first clash, then bond.
The movie is heartfelt, yes, and I was moved by it, but it plays safe.
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