Norman Jewison`s Rollerball
The Norman Jewison version of Rollerball (1975) looked like quite an intriguing work to me at the moment in which I discovered it in the DVD section of the local electronics store. Sure enough, in one of my more impulsive moments, I purchased this alongside the DVD of Cabaret. Yet while Cabaret, as always, was a classic, Rollerball was somewhat under-whelming.
The movie is one of those futuristic stories in which the world seems to have changed for the worse, naturally. The Rollerball game itself is a very violent combination of hockey, roller derby, and just plain hooliganism. It's the kind of sport where participants frequently die, if they aren't at least severely injured, by such things as spiked gloves against skulls, or speeding motorcycles over stumbling bodies. All this just to get a heavy steel ball inside a hole at the top of the track.
The game is apparently the most popular sport in the world, and the world itself is far different from what it would have been in 1975. Governments no longer exist; instead, certain jurisdictions are ruled by corporations, and, as such, are run according to capitalist principles as opposed to more benign ideals. So for example, Houston, Texas, is now just a place run by a company, just as New York, Chicago, and other cities are controlled by other corporate entities.
Down in Houston, the Rollerball team is one of the most successful, and Jonathan (James Caan) is the star player. Whenever he appears on the rollerball rink, the crowd descends into mob mentality and cheers his name over and over again. But the big bosses apparently do not like Jonathan's popularity, because one of the corporate lackeys (John Houseman) attempts to persuade Jonathan to retire. The reason is pretty obvious; in a corporate-inspired world in which everyone is considered to be equal parts of a whole, a person who stands out as an individual is dangerous, because, of course, he`s telling the world that you can be better, you can stand out, from the rest.
But, of course, Jonathan doesn`t want to retire. He wants to play out the rest of the season, at least; the suggestion is that if he`s going to retire, he`s going to do it on his own terms. It would be the one time in a long time that he`d have the chance to make a choice; most other choices have been taken out of his hands. That would include what happened to his wife. I don`t quite understand this, but apparently the corporation took his wife away, and, so to keep him occupied, I suppose, they send down some assorted beauties to fill his spare time.
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