The Black Natural

IT IS MAN that we need. A look caught with surprise can be sublime." That's Robert Bresson quoted in Babette Mangolte's The Models of Pickpocket (showing at Anthology Film Archives), a documentary exploring the mystery of Bresson's art by interviewing the performers of his 1959 film Pickpocket 43 years later. Mangolte investigates the processes that made Bresson's films distinctive, but her inquiry into the phenomenon of film acting is a pop-art coup. It dovetails with Bernie Mac's remarkable performance in Mr. 3000.

Comic-turned-actor Mac intuitively and instructively reveals a mutual sensitivity to the dilemma of a public figure fighting for his place in history. With Pickpocket, Bresson gave its principal actors Pierre Leymarie, Marika Green and Martin Lasalle a form of immortality. First called "interpreters," then "models," they all feel that their lives were changed by working with "Monsieur Bresson." Leymarie carries the memory into his work as a genetics researcher, Green became a professional actress and Lasalle pursued various career options as actor, painter, gardener, always haunted by Bresson's influence. Each performer admits how they "gave" themselves to Bresson. Years later they understood his dictum, "When the model is free of all intentionality, his expressiveness is adequate for the filmmaker." This is not just a high-art command; one gorges on the honest and authentic humor of Mac's characterization.

Mr. 3000 is such a robust comedy that when you realize it also has depth, it nearly becomes an embarrassment of riches. Mac plays Stan Ross, #21 of the Milwaukee Brewers, who gets his 3000th hit, qualifying him for the baseball Hall of Fame, then quits the team. He's not exhausted, just selfish-and that selfishness is a result of his career-long, goal-oriented struggle. To achieve eminence, Ross has pushed against all obstacles of competition that are routine in an athlete's life, that men know especially well, that black men experience as part of society's racist tradition. Ross doesn't give a damn what anybody else thinks about his decision to retire; he's fully aware that he has earned respect if not likability.

What makes Ross the finest characterization on screen this year (comparable to Bresson's realness) is that Mr. 3000 represents a hell of a balancing act. He's an existential American man going through psychological and political slapstick, which Bernie Mac makes absolutely credible. Unlike the neo-W.C. Fields irascibility Mac shows on his Fox tv series, Ross is wound too tight to warm up to anyone. "I'm a certified immortal! And there ain't nothin' y'all sons of bitches can do about it!" he declares. This boast goes to disgruntled fans and peeved sports writers who think Ross gets his comeuppance when he has to return to the team due to a counting error. Though short of his goal, Ross doesn't immediately change his habits, because Mr. 3000 isn't pabulum like Seabiscuit, where a sports hero turns sweet. This characterization digs down into the core of masculine pride that makes people simultaneously admire and resent outstanding athletes.

There have been great jock performances in other movies, like Nick Nolte's in North Dallas Forty, Jamie Foxx's in Any Given Sunday and the extraordinary tandem expose of bravado by Wesley Snipes and Ving Rhames in Undisputed. But none of them matched Mac's resilience, the way Ross swaggers with the pride of talent and experience.

Ross' individuality seems authentic, and director Charles Stone III never makes the insult of connecting Ross' behavior to a bogus patriotic ideal. Simply through his arrogance, Ross embodies the contemporary American ethos in which success and power are considered the rewards of intense self-regard.

Ross doesn't have to go to the Olympics to show what team he plays for; it's apparent in his tv-commercial image and the sense of entitlement that carries over into his one-on-one relationships. This portrait of modern, desperate determination lives alongside the perseverance that Faulkner ascribed to Dilsey in The Sound and the Fury and that Ralph Ellison gave to Invisible Man, except for one crucial difference-it's also funny. Ross has a magnanimous attitude about projecting and protecting his manhood, playing the game of Celebrity Race Man with a wily smile. His friendship with white former catcher Boca (Michael Rispoli) flips and updates the bossman/toady convention that Ron Shelton perpetrated between Kevin Costner and Cheech Marin in Tin Cup. Stone's special insight is that both ballplayers share a sardonic approach to the game and to life. It's implied that they overcame racial differences by realizing that such "differences" were only superficial distractions from society's basic unfairness. Partners in a sports bar, they don't let race or ego get in the way of their pursuit of peace-a jock's version of zen.

This is a major advance in ethnic characterization (both Mac and Rispoli peak). It illustrates how individual responsibility (casually referred to as brotherhood, or teamwork) often founders in an age when so many people lack any agreed-upon moral imperative. Ross (and Boca urging "Do your thing") is up against a team of apolitical jocks and a world of self-interested owners, clueless fans and a battalion of hostile sports reporters. Mr. 3000 breaks ground by honestly exposing-and mocking-the biases that small-minded sports writers put into the culture. This role is a deep-down refutation of that sports writers' canard calling blacks "natural" athletes. Ross first appears to be a stupid egotistical jock, but he responds to the baseball institution with a sense of humor; he's always wary, always mindful of keeping his own conscience. Ross' intelligence shows in his business sense, which comes down to a shrewd if cynical people sense.

And he nearly outsmarts himself in the way he calculates the advantages of making up for lost affection with a female sports reporter, Maureen (Angela Bassett). The jock and journalist once shared a rapacious youth but now look toward middle age with a rueful lustiness. No tête à tête in any 30s screwball comedy (not even Tracy and Hepburn in the 50s sports romance Pat and Mike) was better than Mac and Bassett's testy flirtation. A bedroom scene featuring their satisfied grunts is high comedy, because these are also moans of age. Their sighs express appreciation; the unexpected poignancy is sublime. (Bresson might have approved.) Older and wiser, these former hotshots are gravely passionate-and with a devastating sense of irony. The inflection Maureen uses when calling Ross "Sluggah!" is like a curve ball; it whistles past your dazzled eyes and mushiest expectations. This romantic subplot isn't the usual premeditated sex angle; it grows out of the film's interest in Ross' capabilities, suggesting that his masculine prowess comes from more than luck or genetics; it is also part of his intelligence. ("I can't let them take away my legacy," Ross confides to Maureen.) How he learns to bring his physical, mental and spiritual gifts together fulfills the manhood that the League had always put to the test.

Screenwriters Eric Champnella and Keith Mitchell find resonant comedy in Ross' return to a team with younger players, men who grew up watching his power and his arrogance. They are the legatees of Ross' selfishness, especially the Adonis-like pitcher T-Rex Pennebaker (Brian White), who perfects Ross' iconic status. After T-Rex hits a ball, he arches back-beautifully tense and elegant. It's a dreamboat pose and Ross sees right through it. He sees the vanity that he let get the best of his younger self. His confrontation with T-Rex is a wondrous mixture of paternalism and playing the dozens-a movie first.

Stan Ross recalls Lionel Trilling's assessment of a black man in John O'Hara's short story "Bread Alone": "The Negro is so precisely seen in all his particularity as a Negro that he wonderfully emerges, by one of the paradoxes of art, as a man." That comment from 1945 was made without the benefit (or confusion) of the many social changes that would affect the social condition and mainstream perception of black men. Though making an entertainment, Charles Stone gets real; he, too, knows, "It is man that we need, not another black macho cartoon." With Bernie Mac's contribution, he's created a movie character sensitive to all the paradoxes black athletes have represented for the past quarter century. Watching Mac combine nerve, chagrin and wit is better than a paradox; it's a delight. o