Jon-a-than! Jon-a-than! Jon-a-than!Man, it finally happened: I got around to watching Rollerball. I would like to say, "Why the fuck didn't any one tell me to watch this movie?" but in all fairness my friend Chris actually loaned me the VHS back in college. I tried watching it then, but for whatever reason I only got about twenty minutes in, and then I probably went downstairs to play Mario Kart or something.
For those of you who have no idea what Rollerball (trailer) is, the simplest way of explaining is to say that the film is probably the world's only sci-fi dystopian sports movie. It is centered around the exploits of Jonathan E., played by James Caan, the Michael Jordan-figure of the eponymous sport, Rollerball. The game itself, played on roller skates, seems to be a bizarre mix of roller derby, chariot racing, and um, roulette or Cross-Fire or something. What's most important to know about Rollerball is that it is ultraviolent, complete with maimings, motorcycle explosions, and, by the end, buckets of death.
The action takes place in the Houston of the future, which is to say the Houston of the future as it would have been envisioned when the film came out in 1975, so it looks like, oh, say, 1981. Well, apparently a lot has changed in six years, as democracy, as is usually the case in these movies, has failed, and the world has been divvied up by sinister Corporations, each tasked with controlling a particular sector of the economy, such as Food, Transport, Luxury; Houston is predictably governed by the Energy Corporation. It probably goes without saying that these Corporations are totalitarian in nature, micromanaging every aspect of their citizens' lives while promulgating a completely incoherent ideological amalgam of laissez-faire capitalism, Marxism, fascism, and even some good old feudalism.
The central thrust of the story is that the Executives who make up the Energy Corporation's ruling caste have decided that Jonathan E. must retire from Rollerball. When Jonathan demands an explanation, the Suits (as I will henceforth refer to them) refuse to elaborate; much of the Corporation's governing philosophy can be summed up as "Because I said so." Following the well-trod path of prior dystopian heroes (see Smith, Winston or Montag, Guy), Jonathan begins to question the very foundations of the society in which he so comfortably lives, defying the wishes of his superiors by continuing to play Rollerball as Houston mashes its way through the playoffs. (Do present day Houston sports fans chant "Hous-ton, Hous-ton" in a zombie monotone at sporting events? These are the questions, folks - I just ask 'em.)
The Suits don't take this passively, of course; their main response is to keep ratcheting up the pressure on Jonathan by stripping the game of Rollerball of what few rules it apparently has. For the semi-final game against Tokyo, it is declared that there will be no penalties called (this serves to maximize the out and out "I'm just going to stomp this guy's face with my roller skate for five minutes" factor) and limited substitutions, which means the strategy subtly shifts from figuring out crafty ways to put the metal ball in the pipe (which serves as the goal), to wearing down your opponents by severely injuring as many of them as possible. As you can see, the death-and-dismemberment quotient rises rapidly:
Some thoughts about Rollerball:
- For all of the things that could make this movie seem cheesy and horribly dated (the Shag Carpeting of Tomorrow, the piggybacking on what apparently must have been a mid-'70s roller derby craze, the city of Houston), it is still astonishingly effective, both as a fantastic sports movie and a pessimistic treatise on the future. The action sequences are particularly thrilling (Norman Jewison films his fictitious sport like it was the chariot race from Ben Hur), and James Caan invests Jonathan E. with a surprising amount of depth, giving what is probably his best performance aside from The Godfather.
- Grown men will always look ridiculous on roller skates, no matter how much body armor they are wearing, or how many spikes are protruding from their football helmets.
- The "No man is bigger than the game!" angle eerily prefigures the Barry Bonds steroids saga. If only Bud Selig's solution was to eliminate the rules of baseball and turn the game into a bloody melee of bat-wielding psychopaths.
- We need a Rollerball font, now more than ever:
So I say to you, teach not your children the baseball, the football, the basketball - the silly games of our terminally ill bourgeois society. Instead, buy them a pair of skates (or rollerblades, if you subscribe to the horrendous 2002 remake), and raise them on Rollerball, the sport of the future! I guarantee you we will be bigger than hockey within...well, we may be bigger than hockey right now!
Laugh now, but when Rollerball is on the fall FX schedule, just remember: I told ya so.
