Moneyball Blog Response

Moneyball

2011: Bennet Miller

Cast:
Brad Pitt as Billy Beane
Jonah Hill as Peter Brand
Philip Seymour Hoffman as Art Howe

#1 Did you connect with Brad Pitt’s character? Could you relate in any way t the experiences he went through in his life and how he dealt with him?

For most of the movie, I felt that Billy was a very two-dimensional character. He showed no emotion, and was strictly all business, and as the story unravelled to show his past, I still felt nothing. He gave up a scholarship to Stanford to play baseball, and then when it was revealed that he wasn’t as great as the talent scouts made him out to be, it showed the pain Billy had gone through so he could understand how in baseball no matter how quickly you are built up, you can be pulled down. I never felt sympathy for Billy at this moment however, and nor did I feel bad for him since he had let his ego get in the way of making a good decision. He left the opportunity of going to Stanford, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, just so he could throw a ball around since a few old men in their 50’s told him he was a star athlete.  I could never relate my own life to him since my priorities in life are very different from his; I consider myself to make very practical decisions. With this in mind, the ending scene of the film really made me connect with Billy, it showed he had dreams and aspirations and that he feels emotions like everyone else. As he drove in his car, we could see the tears rolling down his face, and before I assumed he was just an angry baseball manager that was bitter because he never got his time in the spotlight, it showed that he was bottling up his emotions and that even though when things got tough, he always saw the light in his life, which was his daughter. I thought it was a very sweet and sincere moment that really made Brad Pitt’s character, Billy, come to life. I aspire to be like him, a successful businessman, an ambitious loyal man (using the example of when he stayed with his team instead of joining the Red Socks), and overall, a very compassionate, caring man.

#6 There are a number of times when the team’s manager, Art Howe, defines Billy’s requests for line-up changes. Each is trying to put the best possible team on the field, but they are using two different paradigms for making those decisions. How does Billy handle Art’s defiance and, given that Billy is Art’s boss, what do you think of Billy’s approach.

            Billy wanted the team positioned in a specific way that Art deemed awkward and wouldn’t work, because Billy wanted to take athletes obviously groomed for specific positions and rearrange their skills so they could play different roles. Of course, this didn’t make sense to Art as why would you ever risk using a professional athlete for something that he wasn’t made to do, so Billy took some of the best athletes of his team, and replaced them with athletes that were mediocre in comparison to them, and it let to Art having to rearrange the team to Billy’s desire or else the team would completely fall apart. So basically, Billy hired athletes that forced Art to transfigure the team into his design. Of course, Billy had tried getting Art to change the team to his liking, but after he did get his way, he totally pulled the rug underneath from Art and actually making the team worse in skill level so he could get his way. I believe that Billy behaved very pettily, and although he tried to convince Art to change the team and he wouldn’t submit, he could’ve at least included Art in the rehiring of teammates.  I believe that Billy abused his power to get what he wanted, and although he was in the right to do that, he risked a lot by giving up his best players. On the other hand, I do think it was very ingenious as he left Art with no other options, I do think that he gave Art the “tough love approach” of taking a kids toys away, perhaps something he tried on his daughter. I do think in this situation though, Art could’ve got his reasoning across to Billy better than he did, as he basically said, “I do what I want”. He should’ve respected Billy since he is his boss; but I do think Billy needs to understand they are a team.

#4 What was your favourite part of Moneyball? Why?

My favourite scene of Moneyball was definitely the ending, and it wasn’t just because I was glad this baseball mess of a movie was over. The ending scene to me was the first actual scene where I felt or saw character development. It consisted of Brad Pitt driving down a road as he listed to his daughter singing, and I felt that it was a very sweet, beautifully directed father-daughter moment. We could see the tears rolling down Brad Pitt’s eyes, and the rainy background complimented the scene nicely. The shaky camera angle of Brad Pitt’s eyes showed us how although Brad Pitt was very harsh on the outside to his coworkers, his life was actually very unstable and confusing like the rest of ours. It gave us such a better insight into Brad Pitt’s life, and how the light in his life was his daughter. Besides it being a very emotion scene, it built up anticipation to whether Brad Pitt would take the job, and I think it was the best transitioning scene in a movie, ever.