A movie about the importance of being in community.

Rating: Null/10 (23 February 2004)

This is a good movie--that is, a good story well told. Cuba Gooding's performance is outstanding. Ed Harris as coach Jones and Alfre Woodard as the principle are excellent as well. The story is a heart warmer, but avoids descending into Hallmark TV Special style sentimentality.
It is about the importance of community, of being connected to the human community in a significant way. The "message" is that the best possibilities of life are realized only in community with other people, even for those whose possibilities in life are rather limited. Aristotle, the Greek Philosopher made this same point over 2000 years ago in his "Politics." The community or "polis" is more important than the individual, since individuals only find the good life within it. No one can live well in isolation, he said. Everyone, in fact, benefits from everyone's contribution to the good of the whole. This movie illustrates that point.
It uses various metaphors quite well: The fence itself is a metaphor for Radio's relationship with the community. "Radio," a young man with severe mental handicaps, is outside the fence, literally, and emotionally/socially. He pushes a shopping cart past the high school football field every day, outside the chain link fence. He has no friends, no social life at all. The viewer sees him at first through the chain link fence, as someone "outside," someone who is not part of the community. He is invited inside the fence by Coach Jones and after some time for the team to accept him, he becomes part of the community of the football team. He is not shown outside of fences after this.
There is sports as a metaphor for life, which is common enough in movies. Radio is not part of the football community until Coach Jones invites him in. In the same way he is not part of the life of the larger community of the town itself. As the football team at first rejects him but learns to accept him after Coach Jones stands up for him, so also the community at large rejects Radio until Coach Jones stands up for him at the town barbershop.
Radio's collection of radios functions as a metaphor also. Early on, he always has a radio to his ear, listening. It represents his connection to the outside world and his isolation from it. He can hear people talk or sing on the radio, but not interact with them, in the same way that he can see and hear the community where he lives, but is not a part of it. Increasingly, as he becomes part of a real community, he no longer needs the artificial connection of the radio.
Overall, this is a worthwhile movie, not an epic, nor even a great movie, but a good one, and a good illustration of Aristotle's point about the good life only being possible in the polis or community.