Sometimes a film has the ability to pull an audience completely into the world on the other side of the camera. As the sun shines brightly in the Dominican Republic at the start of Sugar, you’ll swear that you can feel the rays bathe your skin.
The latest film from Half Nelson writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Sugar manages to be both incredibly simple and utterly complex, at no point failing to be beautiful and mesmerising. Though at first glance a film about a young man from the Dominican Republic being called up to a local baseball team in rural Iowa, Sugar reveals itself to be concerned with much, much more.
Every Major League Baseball team has a training camp in the Dominican Republic, ostensibly to find the stars of the future that they can promote through the many minor leagues on their way to the top – if they ever get there. Miguel Santos – ‘Sugar’ to his friends – is a pitcher who can throw a sweet knuckle curve and is given a chance to realise his dream. Finding himself thousands of miles from home, language isn’t the only barrier he comes up against as he discovers that it isn’t easy being a small fish in a big pond. Fleck and Boden explore the consequences of the chew-‘em-up, spit-‘em-out method of scouting foreign players that results in hundreds of former ballers being left to work illegally in the US after their careers end with a whimper rather than a bang.
Casting amateurs in the majority of roles results in a great sense of authenticity, with Algenis Perez Soto excelling in the title role. A look can say a thousand words, and in the middle of a country where he continually orders French toast just because it’s the only item on the menu he can say with any confidence, gazing into the eyes of Perez Soto’s Sugar tells you everything and nothing all at once. This is an accomplished and layered performance.
Baseball scenes are shot with affection for the game without making any concessions to those who don’t necessarily understand what’s going on. But a deep knowledge of the sport isn’t needed as we invest in the highs and lows of Sugar himself rather than the game. The rest of the movie is shot with a rare sense of beauty – the opening scenes in the Dominican Republic juxtaposing the majesty of the landscape with the need to escape from relative poverty. A particularly wonderful focusing technique serves to highlight the emotional distance between Sugar and his new surroundings; one scene in particular following him from behind as he walks through the garish and loud surroundings of an arcade and a bowling alley, his back sharply in focus as the world carries on blurrily around him.
Sugar feels imbued with an innate sense of rhythm: early scenes of baseball-lingo language classes are scored not with music but the repetition of ‘Line Drive! Fly Ball! Home Run! I Got It!’ adding just as much musicality as any instrument could – although the score by Michael Brook is subtle and well utilised. This rhythm extends to the uncomplicated editing by Boden, who lets the story and its characters dictate the pace of the movie naturally.
Boden and Fleck are talented filmmakers and their latest is an honourable addition to their body of work, while Birds Eye View can be proud to have screened the movie ahead of a wider release planned for June. Sugar is a profound and honest film that speaks to the very heart of what it is to feel out of place and the struggles we face in discovering where we belong, and it deserves to be seen by as many people as possible.
Sugar will be reviewed in Issue 23 of LWLies, ahead of its release in June.
