Rez Ball
NETFLIX
Consigned to the margins for decades, Native American storytelling is more visible and vibrant than ever. This makes a crowd-pleasing sports drama like Sydney Freeland and Sterlin Harjo’s Rez Ball a welcome addition to Netflix, but don’t expect there to be any surprises in store. All of the familiar tropes are there. Not only is this a sports film, but a sports film about underdogs, with the usual set of stock characters, story beats and setbacks along the way. But like comfort food, enjoying Rez Ball is a sure thing because—the same as a romantic comedy—the audience already knows how it is going to end. What differentiates it is its setting (a reservation in New Mexico) and who is playing the game (teenagers from the Diné Tribe, also known as Navajo), but even in that regard, it doesn’t stretch itself that much, leaning on what has already been established in independent Native filmmaking over the past thirty years.
Our protagonist is high schooler Jimmy Holiday (newcomer Kauchani Bratt), the fun-loving best friend and teammate of star player Nataanii Jackson (Kusem Goodwind). Both have been playing basketball since they were kids, but it’s clear that latter is on another level and carrying the entire team. After a win, the two of them have a heart-to-heart in their usual hangout spot: an abandoned area on a hill, watching the sun go down. “Do you ever think about getting out?” Natannii asks his friend. “Like really getting out. For good?” Jimmy doesn’t understand the question, and it leads to tragic consequences. The next day he and his teammates find out that Natannii has taken his own life. Without their best player, their chance of winning the state championship is in peril.
This has an impact on everyone, but particularly on the team’s coach, Heather Hobbs (Jessica Matten), who is dealing with her own set of issues. Not only is she a female coach in a very male-oriented arena, but she is reckoning with the loss of a protégé, the end of a long-distance relationship with her girlfriend, and losing out on opportunities that would take her off of the reservation. To say the least, she has her work cut out for her and she channels it into a grim determination to take this team to the finish line.
The sports component of Rez Ball isn’t as compelling as it could be. Training montages, rousing speeches, slow-motion plays, last-minute saves, and infighting among players are to be expected. There is even an embarrassing interlude about peer pressure that seems to belong in an after-school special. The team’s progress is reported on by sports shows and radio broadcasts along the way, in most cases narrating what audiences have just witnessed or already know—a shopworn example of leaning on telling instead of showing.
Aside from basketball, these boys face the realities of living life on the reservation. Jimmy has a strained relationship with his alcoholic mother (Julia Jones, painfully underutilized), which is an issue often featured in Native films. The same could be said about the loss of a loved one to suicide. The epidemic of suicides on reservations has been a problem for decades and addressed in Native media quite often, from the late Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls and Chloé Zhao’s Songs My Brother Taught Me to the little-seen LGBT drama Fire Song and other projects created and/or written by Harjo, like his feature debut Four Sheets to the Wind and the award-winning Reservation Dogs. However, like the team’s chances, not all is lost in Rez Ball. When it manages to break through the clichés, there is potential for the story to deepen into something truer to life, albeit never for long. One of the film’s strengths is that it never loses its sense of humor. There are also reminders from the adults mentoring these boys that healing and progress can only come from within themselves and their community.
Other details give the film a personal touch as well. A mural is painted on a local building, commemorating Natannii. A subplot involves Jimmy learning Navajo from his co-worker Krista (Zoey Reyes), which blooms into a shy romance. Lastly, the fact that their team’s main rivals are from a Catholic school isn’t a coincidence. Those implications shouldn’t be lost on anyone. The most memorable and strongest sequence in the film explores an offbeat team-building exercise that has pretty challenging stakes, an illustration of how Native stories can provide unusual set pieces that don’t appear anywhere else. The same could be said for an unexpected development regarding Jones, who brings pathos to a role that could have been marginal in another performer’s hands. She and Ryan Begay, playing Nataanii’s father Roland, share scenes that suggest a more nuanced and interesting film, especially since Roland hasn’t only recently lost his son, but his wife and daughter a year earlier. His grief is never addressed, which was a surprising choice.
Like many Native films, there is an incredible supporting cast backing the main players. Amber Midthunder (FX’s Legion, Prey) has a small role that is thankfully a step up from her cameo in Dream Scenario last year. There is also comic relief offered by comedian and activist Dallas Goldtooth (The 1491s, Reservation Dogs) and Native film veteran Cody Lightning, who appeared in both Harjo’s and Rian Johnson’s feature debuts and cult favorite Smoke Signals. The duo play the Tso brothers, bringing levity as sports commentators during each game.
Although much of Rez Ball could be considered by the numbers, what differentiates it is that the stakes are different for this basketball team. At one point a character says, “That’s the thing about Natives. No matter how hard we try, we always find a way to lose.” This film provides an opportunity to see Natives putting everything on the line in order to win. It’s important to them because it means so much more.