Winner of several imaginary literary and filmmaking awards.Baseball is at its center, but Moneyball is not a sports movie. It is a film about winning, but not winning at sports. With acknowledgement that the sentiment sounds corny, this is a movie about winning at life, a depth that is beautifully probed by director Bennett Miller, in his first film since 2005's Oscar-nominated Capote. That unmistakable human element is what Miller adds to his rendering of a script -- co-written by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, possibly the best screenwriting duo a film could ask for, even though they worked separately -- that already crackles with fabulous characters and vibrant detail. All the behind-the-curtain sports biz drama -- the "inside baseball," if you will -- is captured in the screenplay, but Miller only utilizes it as a fascinating backdrop for a much more complex and intimate story. Moneyball uses a fact-based baseball story as a conduit for a wonderful character study about pursuing dreams, believing in ideals, and maintaining a relentless commitment to turning those dreams and ideals into a reality.
Moneyball tells the story of Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, whose dreams of winning the last game of the season drive his journey through the film. Beane is played by Brad Pitt, in the kind of mega-movie-star-with-depth performance that Oscar nominations are made of. It's turning into a career year for Pitt, who already turned in brilliant, vanity-free work in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, and here assumes a thoroughly more charming characterization, yet still finds the complex core beneath the pretty surface. It is one of his best performances.
In 2002, after losing three marquee players to teams with much larger payrolls, Beane found himself on the precipice of a disaster, presiding over a Major League team with no stars and a payroll so low it became a laughing stock around the league. Disappointment is not unfamiliar to Billy; we learn through flashbacks that, as a top prospect out of high school, he failed to make good on lofty expectations of big league scouts and flamed out as a pro ballplayer. But he is determined not to let success once again elude his grasp as a GM, and chooses to reconstruct his team in a way that could revolutionize the game. He employs a largely derided strategy of evaluating players not purely on the celebrated statistical categories -- home runs, RBIs, etc. -- but rather on the less sexy columns on the stat line, like on-base percentage, walks, and runs scored. The goal is not to replace individual stars, but to construct the right group of players who, together, can produce at comparable levels and get on base enough to contend in every game. It is this strategy that allowed Beane's Athletics to become a shocking underdog sensation in the 2002 season, a timeline the film closely follows.
But through Miller's lens, Moneyball is not merely the story of an underdog team winning against all odds. It is the story of a man who views his team as an extension of himself, or as a way to atone for his past failures. Here is a man who failed to produce as a pro player, who was left by his wife (Robin Wright) for a hot-shot LA douchebag (played by an actor-director I won't spoil, in a pitch-perfect cameo), who is running what most consider to be a minor league team playing at a major league level. The drive to succeed is fueled by years of dashed expectations and personal disappointments, some shown explicitly and others subtly implied. And in this most desperate of situations, Beane discovers a way to succeed as a poor man in a rich man's game. It is not unfair to wonder: might Billy Beane the player have succeeded if he was plugged into a system like Billy Beane the GM employs with the Athletics?
The material, on the surface, could easily resemble a psychic sequel to Jerry Maguire -- one man finds clarity and pursues idealism while struggling against a behemoth industrial machine that fights to pin him down at every turn. But other than a depth of feeling and warmth of emotion, there are no similarities between the styles of Cameron Crowe and Bennett Miller. While Crowe plumbs a Billy Wilder-esque quirkiness of character that is often tinged with strong romanticism, Miller's cinematic intimacy is quieter, subtly illuminating buried emotions rather than letting them bubble to the surface. Pitt is his perfect subject, with a face that exudes effortless charm but hints at the turmoil underneath. Surprisingly strong support comes from Jonah Hill, as a mild-mannered number-cruncher who becomes Beane's indispensable ally. But Miller is the film's MVP, taking strong surface material and probing its depths to deliver an underdog baseball team movie that is not about the team, nor baseball, but reverberates as the truest, most intimate underdog film in years.
