Ivan Kander
Ever heard of Jai Alai? Didn’t think so. Called the “fastest ball game in the world,” it’s a sport that dominated the Miami athletic scene for most of the 20th century before fading from public favor. If you need a primer on the topic, Great Big Story has you covered.
A film as much about the melancholy of regret as it is about the ephemeral nature of sports, Forgotten is a patient character-study of Leon “Tevin” Shepard, a 26 year veteran of Jai Alai. He’s a soft-spoken athlete who is coming to terms with the fact that the passion he put into this particular game will never be reciprocated. It’s about failed dreams…about longing for a past that never was and a future that never will be.
We’ve all seen underdog, downtrodden sports stories before. But, unlike the stuff of Hollywood myth, Director Daniel Soares never gets to the rousing “big game” finale with cheering crowds and weepy music. Rather, he forces the viewer to hang in the more realistic, uncomfortable silence of reality and disappointment. As the film asks: “Would you perform your art, even if nobody is watching?”
In some ways the film is similar in subject matter to Mickey Duzyj’s acclaimed Netflix doc series, Losers, in that it focuses on an athlete who never quite achieved success. But, the tone is very different: less plucky and darkly comic, more somber and reflective.
Soares is a formidable documentary talent with a slew of Vimeo Staff Picks and it’s easy to see why: he has a formal control of the cinematic frame. With Forgotten, each frame feels like a still photo, providing snapshots of Tevin’s daily routine. I was especially taken with the perfectly composed wide-frames. In the crowded short doc landscape, there is often a propensity to get lots of close-ups…lots of found “cut to” b-roll material. But, there is a formal patience and cinematic confidence here that is quite arresting. It’s not a quickly paced film, but its patience allows the weight of its themes and messages to really resonate with the viewer.
In speaking with Short of the Week, Soares relates:
“I’m very intrigued by this idea of things that might be very dear to us today being gone and totally forgotten tomorrow…I really wanted to focus on Tevin, and be in his head and get the viewer to live through what he lives through everyday. So at the end of the day, the sport, the place and the history are just a backdrop to a human centered story.”
Most documentarians aim for this sort of personal approach, but few truly get there. Soares uses the highly specific subject of the decay of Jai Alai to really get into a universal story of regret, loss, and the amazing ability for all human beings to quietly move on even in the face of disappointment.
Forgotten had a healthy festival run (Big Sky, River Run, Santa Barbara) before making its online release. For his next project, Soares is making the transition away from documentaries into narrative work and is currently working on developing his first narrative feature.