FILM CHALLENGE: 157) Hoop Dreams

157) Hoop Dreams

Director: Steve James

Year: 1994

Plot Summary: This documentary follows two inner-city Chicago residents, Arthur Agee and William Gates, as they follow their dreams of becoming basketball superstars. Beginning at the start of their high school years, and ending almost 5 years later, as they start college, we watch the boys mature into men, still retaining their "Hoop Dreams".

You will find Hoop Dreams on pretty much every list of the greatest sports movies ever made. But don't let those accolades fool you, this documentary about two young boys who dream of becoming professional basketball players is not just a simple sports drama. You don't even have to understand or enjoy the sport. It is, instead, one of the most ambitious, honest and heartbreaking films made about life in America that has and ever will be made.

Arthur Agee and William Gates are both from under-privelaged neighbourhoods in Chicago. Unacademic, poor, hungry and living in a den of drugs and crime, most of the people around them have never amounted to anything. The former's Dad is a drug addict and his mother has just been laid off from work. The latter has a brother who stocks shelves and an absent father who left him after he was born. However, they both have one ambition in life: to escape and become an NBA basketball star.

Their passion reflects the idea of the American Dream that no matter where you come from or who you are, if you really put your heart and soul into something then you will succeed. And, hell, do these boys put their heart and soul into it. Early on, we see them in their small bedrooms, the walls cluttered with basketball memorabilia and small hoops hooked onto the door. Every waking minute they spend on their local court or watching the sport live on their TVs.

However, Hoop Dreams is equally about the American nightmare, exploring the faults in the education system and welfare system. As they are picked up by high school and begin to play for their teams, the documentary, first of all, presents a realistic look at how the wealth of a family can determine how much someone succeeds in life. When Arthur is refused another year at a top basketball school because his parents can't pay the fees, for example, it fills you with anger deep in the pit of your stomach. Second of all, it shows how one mark in an exam in these schools - or similarly one point in a game of basketball - can mean the difference between getting a scholarship at a college or being condemned to failure.

The movie is long, clocking at just under three hours, but as you watch every development in both their lives and their careers you will be riveted to the screen. As William steps up to take a penalty in the final of a city wide tournament, a shot that will either make his dreams come true or shatter them into tiny pieces, your will be so tense you can't watch. Or when Arthur's name is printed in every newspaper in Chicago for leading his team to a huge victory you will be as moved and proud as even his mother is.

This is because Hoop Dreams invests so much time in not only Arthur and William but their families too. You equally want William to succeed, for example, in order for his brother Curtis to be happy. Curtis Gates, as he explains early on, could have made the big time and been an NBA star, but flunked his studies and is now condemned to work in a supermarket. He still regrets that chance to make it and sees William as his second hope. Similarly, you equally want Arthur to succeed in order to help his mother out financially.

The second best sports movie of all time - coming in just behind The Wrestler - and ranking right up there with the greatest documentary films that have been produced in cinema, Hoop Dreams is a masterpiece. Well-observed, riveting, inspirational and achingly sad, if the film was ten hours long and spanned their entire lives their still wouldn't be a single second in which you attention would waver because you become so gripped by Arthur and William's stories.

5/5

By Daniel Sarath with 1 comment