HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29
Produced & Directed by Kevin Rafferty
Released by Kino International
USA. 105 min. Not Rated
 

Kevin Rafferty co-directed 1982’s The Atomic Cafe, the seminal documentary on American propaganda and news coverage from the post-WWII and Cold War era. He went on to produce and co-direct many other successful political films, and was a cameraman on Chris Hegedus’s and D.A. Pennebaker’s The War Room (1993) and 1989’s Roger & Me, directed by a young Michael Moore. In an era where corporate influence in media seemed (and still seem) like an unstoppable force, Rafferty’s work continually brought progressive views to the public consciousness.

But Rafferty has a complex family history. He is the cousin of George W. Bush—Rafferty’s mother is the sister of former First Lady Barbara Bush. His grandfather was a former Yale All-American, and, later, head coach for the Yale football team. Rafferty admits that he failed to gain admission to any of his college choices after high school, and only after a prep year in England was admitted to his father’s sworn rival, Harvard University.

In November of 1968, Rafferty and his father sat in Harvard Stadium for the season’s final matchup with rival Yale. Though both teams were undefeated, Yale was heavily favored to win. Captain and quarterback Brian Dowling (the inspiration for one of classmate Gary Trudeau’s proto-Doonesbury caricatures, B. D.) boasted the incredible stat of not having lost a football game since the seventh grade. Aided by future Hall-of-Famer halfback Calvin Hill, the Yale team appeared unstoppable. What transpired over the next four quarters is the ostensible subject of Rafferty’s newest film, a compilation of interviews with over 50 of the original players and real-time clips of the 1968 television broadcast.

Of note are the interviews with defensive safety J. P. Goldsmith, a well-spoken cynic unafraid to poke fun at the close-mindedness of the time (“You see, women didn’t exist yet”), and defensive captain (and friend of classmate George W. Bush) Mike Bouscaren. “You get a lot of snakes in your head,” he says, describing the feeling of being on the field with something to prove, and privately imagining it was his job to injure the opposing quarterback. Harvard lineman and Academy Award-winner Tommy Lee Jones adds more depth to an already fascinating lineup. His grandiose (read cliché) recollections of the game eventually give way to a funny, sardonic, storytelling session about his former roommate Al Gore and their dorm room hijinks.

As is clear from the title (it was first published as a clever headline in The Harvard Crimson), the game was a nail biter. But the reminiscences exist under the shadow of that fateful year. In 1968, both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. In Vietnam, the year saw the horrors of the My Lai Massacre and the Tet Offensive. Also in the background were the riots and unrest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and famous student sit-ins all over the world, notably at Columbia University and Harvard.

Vietnam veteran and Harvard safety Pat Conway speaks of walking forcefully, in his own kind of protest, through his fellow students' anti-war demonstrations, while a Yale player laughs as he remembers participating in a campus protest and Dowling angrily throwing apples at him: “I never knew him to be a political person.” Despite the political divisiveness of the time, many of the players describe football as an escape; a time and place on a Saturday in autumn when political views are put aside for the glory of the sport. Rafferty’s treatment of this historic game, in this particular time and place, though, reminds audiences of the realities that ultimately become intertwined with the history of the game. Michael Lee
November 19, 2008