Lucas Chang

Experimental Video Production

This Sporting Life
I went to go see the the film “This Sporting Life” at the Film Forum on Thursday night. There was a solid amount of people in attendance to watch the film which was around at least 30-40. The film “This Sporting Life” is about the life of a man named Frank Machin. Machin was an unsuccessful coal miner who then became a star rugby player for one of the city’s best rugby league teams in all of Wakefield. The club owner named Gerald Weaver recruits and signs Machin after seeing him play in a trial game and liked his angry and aggressive style of play.

I found this film very interesting because in my opinion, I felt like it had addressed some issues that can be related to real life. For example, when we think of the results of aggressive behavior and actions, we often think of negative repercussions and responses. Whether people have to pay a certain fine, or are arrested, we often pair aggression with negativity. However in the film “This Sporting Life” we get to see examples of how aggressive and anger can lead to both positive and negative results.

One of the examples of aggression being a positive thing is when Machin is when he defends himself at the night club while beating up some of the locals at the club after he was threatened by one of the captains of the rugby team, which ultimately got him a trial game for the rugby league team. One other example, is throughout the rugby game when Machin punches and elbows his own teammate for not passing the ball and the referees mistake the opposing player for the violation instead of Machin. However, Gerald Weaver, the manager of the rugby team likes the aggressive style of play displayed by Machin and views him as an asset to the league team as a way of making a profit. As a result, Weaver and the rest of management signs Machin to a contract to play rugby for the city league team. In this analysis we see that because of Machin’s brutality, he is rewarded with a new job with great pay as well.

One example of the negative aspect of Machin’s aggression is when he eventually starts to have romantic feelings towards a widow named Margaret. Unfortunately for Machin, Margaret cannot reciprocate his feelings because she is still grieving her late husband who died from a suicide. This causes Machin to behave aggressively towards her, angry at the fact that she has rejected him. As a result he leaves the house and stays at a homeless men’s shelter. Later on in the film, Machin looks to reconcile with Margaret only to find out that she is unconscious in the hospital not too long after he left. She sadly dies from being unable to regain consciousness, leaving Machin all alone with her two children. We can see that Machin’s aggressive behavior as a negative factor because if he wasn’t occasionally violent towards Margaret he wouldn’t have had to leave the house and Margaret would never have become unconscious and would still be alive.

In conclusion we can see that aggression can have both positive and negative repercussions in life, depending on certain situations. I found this interesting because I believe that aggressive behavior shouldn’t be viewed as a negative factor if it used the correct way. “This Sporting Life” helped me see that aggressive behavior can have its benefits also.