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Rudy (Sean Astin) has grown up dreaming of being a football player
for Notre Dame and nothing is going to get in his way. At first
I groaned at this idea. Is he really going to leave behind his
girlfriend (fiancé?) to try to play football? It eventually
becomes apparent he doesn’t care too much for her anyway.
My real concern, though, was that Rudy would be a glorification
of pride and a promotion of unconditionally following dreams,
no matter how self-serving or dangerous the dream may be. Such
was the case with Men of Honor and A Knight’s
Tale, whose protagonists made stupid, life-threatening decisions,
against the pleading of friends and family, in order to satisfy
their bloated self-image. Such is not the case, however, with
Rudy.
Rudy makes dreamers of dreams look good. First, he shatters the
widely believed (though frequently true) notion that dreamers
are not doers – the words of Rudy’s high school teachers
trying to bring him back to reality. Rudy’s hard-nosed determination
from beginning to end is largely what makes his pursuit worth
watching in the first place. Rudy stands in the face of more frequently
good advice when his father (Ned Beatty) tells him that, “Chasing
a stupid dream causes you and everyone around you nothing but
heartache.” Rudy minimizes potential heartache by taking
responsibility and working hard at everything – school,
work and football practice.
Indeed, it is his diligence that makes everything possible. It
is his humble, hard work that leads the other players to rally
for his dressing up and taking the field. Basically, his work
itself doesn’t get him on the field, rather his work earns
him respect, which is what gets him on the field. His teammates
are willing to make a sacrifice for him simply out of respect
for the sacrifice he has made for them.
This brings up another issue. For whom is all the hard work really
for? “To prove that I’m something,” is what
Rudy claims. What is it really? It’s hard to say. Sure,
he there to prove himself. He’s also there to prove his
friends and family wrong. But I believe that Fortune’s (Charles
Dutton) final speech changes him. It seems to be that Fortune’s
words shake him and help him realize what his schoolteacher had
said so many years before, that the “secret to happiness
is to be grateful for the gifts the good Lord has given us.”
It seems his final choice is really one of gratitude and resolution
to finish the race rather than prove himself great.
The whole production, well-filmed in general, and well performed
by Astin, does have its inconsistencies. What the heck is the
point of Mary? She becomes a semi-major character and then drops
off the face of the earth. Even stranger is the audience at the
end. Would an audience really start chanting for someone they
don’t know at all? Even worse, how could they brake into
applause when Rudy takes the field, when they have no idea who
he is? Also, how could Rudy’s family have grown up such
obsessive Notre Dame fans, have lived within distance of South
Bend, and yet have never been to a game? Does Fortune really never
attend the games, even though he can apparently get in without
charge? Is Frank (Scott Benjaminson) really that resentful towards
his brother, just because he has a crazy dream?
It seems like a lot of things are set up to play off all the more
dramatic at the finale. But you know, in those final moments,
when Rudy reaps the benefits of his labors, it all gets lost in
the cheers and tears of friends and family towards a guy who honestly
deserves it.
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