Baseball Girl
Director: Choi Yun-tae
Year: 2020
Rating: 7.0
Country: Korea
One of my few traditions is watching a
baseball film to inaugurate the start of a new season. It Happens Every Spring
to me. I skipped it last year because I didn't think that really counted
and so will watch two this year. When I was a mere boy I ate, drank and pissed
baseball. Not so much anymore but I still check the Red Sox box score every
day (they lost yesterday but are still leading their division). I happen
to think baseball is the only sport that really matters though obviously
many would disagree but I don't think there can be much argument though that
only baseball matters in terms of films. There have been so many of them
while the other sports have only had a smattering of worthwhile films about
them. Basketball has Hoosiers and not much else, American football has more
but only a few that anyone remembers, ping pong has Ping Pong a great Japanese
film and As One a terrific Korean film, soccer I don't know but who cares
about a film with grown men chasing a ball up and down the field for 90-minutes.
There is just something about baseball that brings out great writing and
drama - the one on one contest within a team sport has a certain mythic quality
in films. No other team sport has that. Here I have gone over to Korea to
watch one.
Baseball was supposedly introduced to Korea
by the missionaries back in the early 20th century. So they brought baseball
and Christianity with them. Baseball being the important one. It caught on
slowly but in the 1980's they formed professional leagues and are now good
enough to have a number of their players make it in the American Major Leagues.
So these are very good players who take their sport very seriously - which
is needed context for this film. Because a girl is trying to enter the hallowed
professional grounds of this sport - where she is not welcome. It is her
Field of Dreams but she is no Natural and has no Million Dollar Arm (see
how I did that - baseball movies rule). But she has the grit and perseverance
to never give up.
Joo Soo-in can throw a fast ball at 135
km (about 83 miles per hour) which made her a star in high school where she
played with the boys and got a lot of publicity - but in the pros? That is
a fat pitch. Batting practice. For most of us mortals it would be in the
catcher's glove before we even saw it but not for the pros. The casting here
of Joo is intriguing. I would have expected them to find a fairly strong
bigger than average female but they go with Lee Joo-young, who is very petite
and as cute as a batch of freshly baked cup cakes. She became a star of sorts
for her role in the TV drama Itaewon Class which I have watched a bunch of
episodes of. It's good though I could not say why. In that she plays a transsexual
- a boy who wants to be a girl. She has won all sorts of awards for her acting.
But playing professional baseball? That could be a stretch. But she kind
of pulls it off - primarily because there is very little baseball shown other
than her throwing a baseball. It is mainly a drama with a tiny sprinkling
of comedy.
Now graduating from high school she finds
herself on the outs. Her mother is like the Bad News Bears and wants her
to forget her dream and get this crap job in an office. She just keeps Banging
the Drum Slowly - you are never going to make it in the pros - give up. But
Joo won't and keeps driving herself but no matter how hard, her fastball
won't get up much faster. She has fine form but at her size there is not
much you can do. Finally her high school coach (Lee Joon-hyuk) who had also
been telling her to quit took my advice. It is not all about speed. Duh.
Koji Uehara among many pitchers come to mind. They could not throw much above
85 mph but had incredible movement on their other pitches. He took the Red
Sox to the World Series as their closer.
The coach teachers her the knuckleball.
A very tough pitch to master. But this being a movie she does in no time
and gets a try out for the professional minor leagues. The film is very low-key
with a only a few exhilarating moments - mainly it is watching her throw,
argue with her mother, argue with her coach and look determined. A few places
where you thought the film might go romantically it doesn't. But I quite
enjoyed it - the whole underdog theme in sports is almost always a winner
and Lee Joo-Young is a pleasure to watch. This is For the Love of the Game.
