SELF PORTRAIT: a review of "The Way Back"

"THE WAY BACK"
Screenplay Written by Brad Ingelsby
Directed by Gavin O'Connor
***1/2 (three and a half stars)
RATED R

"It takes time to learn all the things you need to learn. And it also takes time to suffer enough  until at some point there's something inside you that says, 'No mas. I give.' What it really is, personally in me and what I've seen in others, that I want for myself, is a profound sense of humility.  You are not stronger than the thing that you're addicted to. It is stronger than you. It will always be stronger than you."
-Ben Affleck, interview February 28, 2020

Forgive me if I have happened to have made this observation before upon this blogsite, but if so, I do feel compelled to mention it once again. I honestly do not understand the disdain that has followed Ben Affleck around for so much of his career, especially when compared to  his friend and longtime compatriot, Matt Damon. Yes, there was once a time many years ago when I reasoned to myself the following distinction: Matt Damon seemed to be more interested in being an "actor," while Ben Affleck seemed to be more interested in being a "movie star," an opinion I harbored solely based upon the films they were choosing to make. 

With Gus Van Sant's "Good Will Hunting" (1997), which Affleck and Damon both starred and co-wrote the Oscar winning screenplay notwithstanding, there was a time during which Matt Damon performed in nothing less than Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" (1998), Anthony Minghella's "The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's Eleven" (2001), to name a few, while Ben Affleck, however, worked in films of a decidedly lesser pedigree, most notably Michael Bay's horrendous "Armageddon" (1998) and even worse "Pearl Harbor" (2001). 

While over the past 20 years, my initial feelings concerning both men have decreased considerably, as they have had hits and misses each, and Damon possesses his own franchise with the Jason Bourne series, it always feels as if Ben Affleck is still the one who has something to prove. Over the years, he has more than demonstrated his considerable acting chops from Kevin Smith's "Chasing Amy" (1997) and "Dogma" (1999) to Roger Michell's "Changing Lanes" (2002) and David Fincher's "Gone Girl" (2014). Additionally, he has more than raised his own bar with his superior efforts as a Director with "Gone Baby Gone" (2007), "The Town" (2010) and the Academy Award Best Picture winning "Argo" (2012). 

Yet, even with those successes under his impressive belt, that disdain continues into more box office driven features and augmented by his hefty presence within tabloid culture, from his past relationship with Jennifer Lopez, the dissolution of his marriage to Jennifer Garner and his private/public bouts with alcoholism.

With the arrival of Gavin O'Connor's "The Way Back," all of the personal baggage that comes with being Ben Affleck as well as our perceptions of him, are firmly weaved into the drama of this film. And, instead of being a distraction, I have the feeling that this was an intentional move on the part of the filmmakers and definitely Affleck himself, who stars in the leading role of a man struggling with his addictions. It was a move that undeniably intrigued me when I first saw the trailers for this film last Winter, making me curious as to what I might see and how much of a reveal Affleck was willing to deliver to us through a character. And the resulting affect was...well...for lack of a better expression...sobering.

"The Way Back" stars Ben Affleck as Jack Cunningham, former high school basketball star and now an alcoholic construction worker, living a largely isolated life after becoming separated from his wife, Angela (played by Janina Gavankar). The dark routine of Jack's life essentially plays out in an endless loop of work, a night at his local bar, being brought home by a watchful barfly named Doc (Glynn Turman) and passing out to just perform the same routine all over again, with constant alcohol at his side--even during his morning showers--and to much concern from his family, including his sister, Beth (Michaela Watkins) as well as Angela. 

One day, upon returning home, Jack receives a telephone call from Father Devine (John Aylward) of his alma mater, the Catholic high school Bishop Hayes, asking him to consider returning to his old school to coach the basketball team after their head coach suffers a heart attack. The team has not won a championship since Jack's school days and perhaps, he might be the one to help the team get themselves back on track. And truth be told, perhaps being of service to others might help Jack rebuild himself in the process.

By this description, Gavin O'Connor's "The Way Back" may certainly sound like an updated version of the inspirational sports drama merged with a tale of personal redemption, and you would not be wrong. Thankfully, it is in how O'Connor tells his story where any sense of lazy formula cliches are wholly circumvented in favor of more muted tones, considerable nuance, a quietness of tone and an unforced sense of inherent drama so as to not invent hyperbolic sequences when absolutely none are needed.    

O'Connor has fashioned a muted, decidedly understated film in "The Way Back," which is formulaic but utilizes the formula to its advantage to ensure the reality and gravity of the story is never discarded in favor of easy sentiments or answers. What O'Connor and crucially, Ben Affleck have delivered is a poignant, internalized self portrait, one uninterested in devising easily packaged conclusions to upending personal traumas. 

Augmented with Cinematographer Eduard Grau's gritty visuals and Composer Rob Simonsen's more ambient score, "The Way Back" is firmly planted as a slice of life film, one that is much closer to Kenneth Lonergan's "Manchester By The Sea" (2016) than David Anspaugh's "Hoosiers" (1986), where the emotions, motivations and overall humanity of the piece is forefront, darker and considerably, sadder.

Most certainly, all eyes are upon Ben Affleck's performance and without question, it is one of the finest, most honest and unguarded of his career. It is a performance given without vanity and is often surprising in its invitation into Affleck's private demons, made public through tabloid and social media. It is a work that is essentially speaking of himself via a character, to which he is closely related existentially.    

Regarding the daily routine of Jack Cunningham during the film's firs third, does indeed make you question if reality was indeed this internally harrowing for Affleck himself. Again, this is not ever sensed as a distraction from the film itself, but one where the film, character and actor all inform each other, making the disease of alcoholism even more tangible as we know going into the film that Affleck is having the same issues personally. 

Additionally, and greater than the actual drinking and alcohol consumption, it is the regret, the pain, the overall withdrawal from life that we witness that packs the considerable punch dramatically. While we are witness as to how much Jack is actually cared for by family and friends, we also witness their fatigue at being his caretaker, something I feel that we are meant to infer that Jack fully understands, thus leading to his isolation. We are witness to Jack's sense of shame and grief, mourning and defeat, which are all waved away, so to speak, with more and more alcohol, which then increases his need to retreat from life.

To that end, all of the sections devoted to his coaching of the team and his ensuring relationships with the teenage players plus Bishop Hays' staff members, including Algebra teacher/Assistant Coach Dan (very well played by Al Madrigal) and Father Mark Whelan (Jeremy Radin), are all fully grounded in patience and quiet. Even when tensions run high, from the basketball game sequences to more confrontational moments between characters, O'Connor never makes the mistake of overselling the moment, and the restraint makes all of the difference in presenting life as it is lived and being otherwise, and in the case of this film, mistakenly melodramatic. 

Returning to Ben Affleck and the depth of his work in "The Way Back," I also commend him for not only allowing himself to being revealing but also, revealing in such a fashion that he is also elevating whatever mystery he owns to our perception of his real world public persona. Yes, he is portraying a character and we are meant to meet the film at face value. 

And yes, I do think we are also meant to wonder just how much of this character is supposed to be confessional. This goes all the way to the casting of Janina Gavankar as Jack's ex, Angela, who bears a striking resemblance to Jennifer Lopez rather than say, Jennifer Garner, which did make me question if perhaps Lopez was the great love of Affleck's life. Now, of course, all of this is speculation but it did indeed add to the somber tenor of the film as a whole as we are meant to regard the pieces that make up a life and how those pieces fall apart and are attempted to being restructured, albeit in a new way as old pieces might not fit in the ways they had once before. 

Maybe think of it like this: What if "The Way Back" is kid of a quasi-sequel to "Good Will Hunting," this time focusing upon the character Affleck portrayed in that film. What if Jack Cunningham is essentially a representation of that character, now an adult, now without his best friend or any of his former friends, who now finds himself within an existential crisis. Not a matter of any sense of arrested development. But of growing from and ultimately, surviving life's disappointments, failures and tragedies and Ben Affleck succeeds with a subdued, knowing grace which you can gather from his sunken eyes, his slouch and his superhero physique gone to seed.

And yet, there is another layer to this experience that I am certain the filmmakers never counted on but does inadvertently make "The Way Back" more universal and perhaps a tad prescient.

It was the weekend of March 6th when this film was originally released to theaters. I almost went to the movies that weekend to see this film but decided against it due to the gradual rise of the coronavirus, which was looming in the background and just one week later would officially be paramount within all of our lives, inspiring the months long quarantine during which our movie theaters closed in a nationwide lockdown. Now, having seen the film, plus also witnessing how the nation at large, including movie theaters, has largely re-opened--coronavirus be damned--I am also regarding how the film has now become somewhat re-contextualized to fit the societal moment, while also existing as a deeply personalized interior drama. 

While "The Way Back" is the story of Jack Cunningham, which mirrors aspects of the personal story of Ben Affleck, in a way COVID-19 has informed the film even further as we are all currently taking stock of ourselves and our lives during a time of constant upheaval, trauma, uncertainty and grieving for the lives we all once had before the global pandemic changed the world as we knew it. We are all struggling in finding our respective ways back to...something. 

Finding the way back to...something...has no clear road maps or guide lines. All we can hope to have is the compassion of others to help us upwards when we do invariably fall, and that we are able to do the same should the need arise. That is what Gavin O'Connor's "The Way Back" represented to me, while being a smart, empathetic film that understands the journey to any sense of recovery is not achieved in one grand gesture or victory but from every moment to moment during which just keep ourselves moving.