Overcome is a short film about a young man with autism who finds refuge from the outside world with his love for basketball. The film has a run-time of about 22 minutes and it is directed by Thibault Marsaudon.
The film finds its technical strength in its sound design. The design is smooth and engineered in such a way that we are inside of the protagonist John’s head. Heavy construction noises, overbearing screeching noises of breaks on buses, people screaming and yelling—all such city noises that bring with themselves an orchestra of fear and loathing for John are meticulously over-exposed in the sound design to have somewhat of a similar effect on us as viewers and listeners. This gives us a much better understanding of the symptoms John struggles with on a daily basis, something we know he has yet to overcome at the beginning of the film. The hypersensitive reactions to human touch are also evident in John’s character as in the start of the film he repeatedly and fearfully shies away from any human contact.
This is until he meets actor Amilcar Javier’s character who plays a basketball coach figure, inviting John to play and learn how to drive the ball to the basket. As John’s first practice on an outside neighbourhood court is interrupted by car horns which trigger him into a panic attack, his parents arrive at the scene bewildered and angry at the coach for not knowing John’s condition and treating him like any other normal basketball enthusiast. Once the family arrives home, we again hear the muffled dialogue of the parents as if we are hearing it from John’s ears while they speak of doctors and negotiate a plan of action.
This leads to John’s isolation in his room, watching the NBA finals between the Raptors and the Warriors at his desk. His parents ultimately decide to support John in his passion for basketball, and the next scene John and his most prized possession, his brand new basketball make their way onto the court. John not only starts to develop basketball skills and team-building skills, he slowly starts to engage socially with the coach and actor Luiji Massanga’s character. As we start to see this progress, John is mugged on the street by a hoodlum and has another breakdown. The film shows mostly the struggle of autism and the emotional hardships that a family may go through to overcome some of the more common and challenging symptoms, like panic attacks portrayed in the film.
Basketball fans may get a sense of nostalgia by John’s old-school poster of Alonzo Mourning on the wall, atop his bed. The poster looks over a crumpled John in bed as his mother, performed by Molly Gazay, makes her way over to his comfort. She encourages John to continue his basketball, and motivates John to enter into a tournament alongside his new two teammates. The end of the film follows the long-endured trend of sports films, where the team we cheer for are underdogs. At the break, coach gives us a good old pep-talk, followed by the emotional climax of the film, as our hero John removes his ear plugs and enters the game with a new set of eyes and ears that signify him overcoming some of his symptoms and conditions, for what we witness to be at least during the rest of this game. The film sets up John to have the ball at the last second with his team down one, as he spins and leaves his defender in the dust and scores the game winning bucket at the sound of the buzzer.
What we witness is how strength is achieved through team work and believing in each other’s drive for accomplishing something greater than ourselves. If the two abled teammates never gave John the chance, then they would have never won this game themselves without him. And in the process, they had not become the heroic figures who held John up on their shoulders in victory. To understand disability, you have to believe that it is a source of inspiration and strength instead of weakness to really give the world a chance for being a better place. And this film did that with John’s story.
The final sequence of Overcome could have used a better set-up and more suspenseful directing to get audiences more hyped about what’s actually happening within the game. Although coach talks about other players boxing out, heavy pick and rolls being set, and more physicality from the other team during the first half, we barely see or hear any of this. To be picky, the actual basketball direction throughout the film if you will needs a bit of reframing and better structuring, but that is not what this film is about in the long run. This film is about how sports and athletics can help individuals with mental and physical disabilities overcome challenges, feel confident, and most importantly find a safe space where they feel like they can belong and affect change in a meaningful way that the real world does not empower them to do so on many fronts.
By: Darida Rose
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