Pinball machines seem like a natural for cinema, but outside of, say, the adaptation of Tommy and to a lesser extent maybe Licorice Pizza, the clanging, flipping, plunging devices haven’t been a big-screen staple, despite the entire franchises built around video games. (The 1980 sex comedy Pinball Summer practically disowns its conceit, and is primarily known as Pick-up Summer.) Written and directed by brothers Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg, Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game is more than another ‘70s period piece. The childish game transcends its bells and whistles to tell a profound lesson about growing up.
The movie pings around the life of Roger Sharpe (the young mustachioed version played by West Side Story’s Mike Faist), who in the mid-‘70s was a 30-something divorced would-be writer trying to make it in New York City. With prospects looking dim on all fronts, Sharpe wanders the grimy metropolis and finds solace in an adult bookstore, one of the few places where he can engage in his favorite pastime, the only thing he seems to be any good at: pinball.
You see, Sharpe learns that the reason his innocent skillset can only be exercised in a den of ill repute is that the machines had been banned in New York City (as well as other major cities) as a result of overactive anti-gambling regulations. A brief montage introduces Fiorello La Guardia as the villain of this story, demonizing the machines as games of chance that siphon quarters from unsuspecting children. (“The bad guy is not only dead; he’s got an airport named after him.”) Sharpe, on the other hand, having learned how to play the game, is inevitably drawn into the legal precedent, and as the film’s subtitle says, he really did kind of save pinball.
Of course, life hands Sharpe detours, and as chrome spheres carom around the playing field his life rom-coms around an elevator, where he meets cute with single mother Ellen (Crystal Reed). Here one should note the film’s framing device. Pinball begins with a docudrama reminiscence from the elder Sharpe (played with an avuncular authority by Dennis Boutsikaris), who addresses the filmmakers/interviewers with skepticism. “I don’t know why you wanna do this.” “It’s a great story!” an off-screen interlocutor answers. The veteran Sharpe is depicted as reluctant and even dismissive of his own legacy, but a flash of fond memory launches us into the main plot, and Sharpe occasionally returns to comment and even watch over his younger self, sometimes to encourage, sometimes to criticize.
It’s a conceit that works better when Alejandro Jodorowsky does it, and it’s charming to a point, but also seems like a distraction; then again, such distractions are germane to the subject. With the help of cinematographer Jon Keng, Pinball truly captures the rapid-fire physicality of pinball: the clicking numbers on the scoreboard, the thwack of flippers and the momentous thunk of the spring-loaded plunger that throws out the first ball. Even if Ellen doesn’t seem as much of the era as other characters, the film frequently revels in smart details, and that goes for sound especially. The bass-heavy soundtrack by Rob Barbato is just one example of how much the filmmakers pay attention to that aspect of the game, and certain percussion passages echo the pinball bumps but in a muted fashion, in sympathy with a protagonist who’s still working out his real life game. The art department does its part as well, going to the trouble of designing a regional game for a split-second shot whenever Roger changes location.
Faist is endearing as the central player, bouncing around life from bumper to bumper with little direction. It’s in his shaggy life that the filmmakers illuminate a central metaphor, as he explains to his then new-friend Ellen in that adult bookstore: “When I’m here I can control the chaos.” The love story is more than just a romantic aside. When Ellen pushes aside Roger’s ‘stache for a kiss, it’s like she’s engaging his flippers: pinball here is an extension of the body, grounding the game in human anatomy. And standing out of the supporting cast is Bryan Batt, effectively amplifying his “Mad Men” role as he, instead of playing a closeted ad man, hams it up as a flamboyant art director for GQ (which, as he hilariously explains, is catered to “mostly rugged men.”)
With loving detail, if occasionally a little, flip, as it were, Pinball paints a loving picture of a game as visually compelling as billiards, but more so. If the film’s modest successes prevent one from calling it the Citizen Kane of its limited subgenre, then it’s at least The Hustler – or The Color of Money.
Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment
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