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HOCKEYLAND
Director: Tommy Haines MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:48 Release Date: 9/9/22 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 8, 2022 Director Tommy Haines follows two high school hockey teams in northern Minnesota over the course of a season in Hockeyland. It almost feels as if the filmmaker is hedging his bets on which team will go the distance—or, at least, go the further distance—through the league playoffs and beyond here. That's especially the sense we get once one of these teams is knocked out of competition. All of the players whose lives we have been following simply disappear from the movie. In a way, that's to be expected, since Haines' documentary is primarily about the sport, both in terms of specific games and in how it has helped, overtaken, and/or given purpose to the lives of these teenagers. They have lives off the ice, to be sure. Since the key subjects here are on their respective varsity teams, though, they're at a point in their careers when they're looking to move on to the junior leagues, hoping to continue to the NHL, or college. Some of them are being interviewed by professional scouts. Others are hoping for the best but pragmatic. The movie spends time with a handful of players from one school in Eveleth, a mining town that has been on an economic decline, and another in Hermantown, which has been on the rise. They're rival schools, and the movie makes it clear that Eveleth, unofficially led by player Elliot Van Orsdel, is the underdog to Hermantown, along with its star player Blake Biondi, who could be playing professionally by now but wants to finish school. The split focus attempts two things: First, it's showing how much these teens share despite their somewhat different backgrounds, and second, it intrinsically builds toward a showdown between the two teams. Haines doesn't want us to make a distinction between players on rival teams, if only because each of them has a story of hardship—some physical ailment and a family illness, for example—or a sturdy character—Biondi helping kids, because he recalls being a boy with a dream of making it the state finals (The inclusion of a news report featuring a younger Biondi is quite touching in that context). Generally, they're good kids/young men, and it's unfortunate to know that heartbreak is in store for at least some of them. Because the movie is split between these teams and these individuals, though, our understanding of these players, their obsession with the game, and what they get out of it is kept at an entirely superficial level. Hockeyland is, ultimately, about the teams doing as well as they can match by match and rising as far as possible in the tournaments. If the filmmakers really cared about these players as more than some human interest to ground the hockey footage, they might not have been so quick to dismiss an entire team as soon as their hopes are dashed. Copyright © 2022 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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