Sarang's latest effort, Hold a Little Something Back, is a stunning exploration of violence. More than most movies, Hold a Little Something Back is about us, the viewers. Sarang interrogates our response to violence, the way we fit it into neat categories, the way we attempt to civilize it or, failing that, to banish it from civilized society. He holds up for inspection our sanctimony, our rationalizations, even our preoccupation with positioning ourselves relative to the violence that we witness... and then he lets us draw our own conclusions. Nothing is forced but the encounter with ourselves.
Visually, Hold a Little Something Back is perhaps his most accomplished movie to date. Emotionally, it is strong but manipulative—but as suggested above, it is maybe stronger for the manipulation, for there is a kind of honesty in its transparent machinations. Its cumulative force is overwhelming—if you wear mascara, I advise you to use the water-proof variety when you see this movie.
As Hold a Little Something Back opens, it replicates a typical NFL broadcast from the mid-1980s. Low-resolution by today's standards, and featuring what now seem like retro uniforms, the film puts us into the living room on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Sarang even airs period-appropriate commercials for beer and cars, which may explain how he was able to afford the movie's exorbitant production costs.
About ten minutes into the game, the announcer expresses surprise at a particularly brutal hit on the Cowboys quarterback, a fictionalized star named Drew Layton. At this point, the film begins a subtle shift. The resolution sharpens gradually, and the commercials stop airing. Soon, the score is no longer displayed on the screen, and the shots become more cinematic, zoomed-in to show the action instead of the whole of the play. The announcers fade away and we hear only the roar of the crowd, the grunts of the players, the sickening crunch of helmet on helmet. We are not in our living rooms anymore.
And now we see with our own eyes that D'Shawn O'Neill, a (fictional) defensive player for the Los Angeles Rams, is indeed going after Layton as if he is trying to injure him. At one point he is called for a late hit, but the referees mostly allow him to keep the hits coming. By the standards of mid-80s football, O'Neill is simply playing hard. To a modern viewer, the reckless violence is shocking, and I found myself wondering if Hold a Little Something Back were Sarang's foray into the CTE debate.
But after half-time, O'Neill steps up the violence. We see what the referees can't: at the bottom of a pile of players, O'Neill methodically punches Layton in the ribs, not even trying to wrestle the ball from him. O'Neill would rather inflict pain on Layton than win the game. Or maybe he just wants the Cowboys offense to stay on the field so he can keep hitting Layton. This thuggishness is hard to watch, particularly since O'Neill is black and Layton is white, so that the behavior fits into very uncomfortable stereotypes.
In another encounter, Layton is carrying the ball when O'Neill slams him head-on in a helmet-to-helmet hit that rattles Layton's brain so hard that he loses control of his body for a second. The ball drops from his momentarily paralyzed hands, but the camera stays on Layton's slack face while the players scramble for the loose ball. This kind of hit was legal in the 80s, and unlike some of O'Neill's other behavior it actually promotes the Rams' chances of winning, but it is very difficult to watch. We now know that the brain suffers permanent and cumulative damage from this kind of injury.
Suddenly and without prelude, the camera jumps to a children's hospital, where the Rams, in uniform, are spending time with chronically ill children as part of community outreach. The children are dazzled, but soon it is time for the players to leave, and the camera zips back to the game, where one of the Dallas offensive linemen is getting into a fistfight with O'Neill, presumably in defense of his quarterback. The Rams coach pulls O'Neill aside and yells at him, a short, fat, balding white man dressing down an impassive, brutish black man in face paint—the racial dynamic continues to be very uncomfortable.
The camera moves back to the children's hospital. This time O'Neill is unaccompanied by his teammates, and he's not in uniform. A nurse looks on gratefully while he plays checkers with a painfully skinny Mexican boy, who looks bashfully at O'Neill from under his long eyelashes, clearly starstruck.
O'Neill is sitting on the sidelines and his quarterback, a handsome sweaty white boy, sits next to him and leans in to ask him if he is all right, feigning nonchalance, but clearly worried about O'Neill's mental state.
A doctor is asking if a young black girl in pigtails is all right. She has vomited on the book that O'Neill is holding in front of her, and now she is crying. O'Neill lifts her up in his giant hands and turns her around to cry into his shirt. Oh baby, there are plenty more books, don't you worry.
O'Neill is crying on the sideline.
Layton gives an impromptu interview on TV: "Honestly, I wonder if it might actually clean up the cities. It doesn't seem like too many regular people are getting it, does it? Drug addicts and homos, mostly."
A doctor is explaining to O'Neill that children born with HTLV are living under a death sentence, that they will be lucky to celebrate their fifth birthday. The doctors can only treat the secondary infections and hope for the best. (HTLV was an early misnomer for what we now call HIV.)
O'Neill flattens Layton with his most brutal hit yet. (We can't see whether Layton had the ball at the time of the hit.) Layton doesn't get up. His body lies perfectly still on the ragged green field, strangely peaceful. O'Neill, too, appears to be hurt, though he rises to one knee, hunched over and breathing hard.
A Chinese-American doctor in scrubs puts a comforting hand on O'Neill's shoulder and tells him he is a good man. Behind them somewhere a machine beeps regularly, delivering medicine or glucose or oxygen, or maybe just counting out the seconds of a life cut short.
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