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Thread: Wizard Mode (Nathan Drillot, Jeff Petry)

  1. #1
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    Wizard Mode (Nathan Drillot, Jeff Petry)

    A doc about pinball and autism, through the eyes of Robert Gagno.


  2. #2
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    I wouldn’t say I’m the biggest fan of pinball machine playing, but I’m old enough that I ran into them with as much frequency as the Donkey Kong and Street Fighter 2 arcade machines. Back when video games were tough to come by and cost a quarter for one play, dropping a coin for three balls sometimes returned the longer game play time. As a kid, that can trump all. From that perspective, I have a deep respect for pinball machines.

    Wizard Mode begins like several of the other video game docs of recent years. Introduce your main player, show what their core skill or challenge is, and join them on the journey as they try to accomplish their goal. But fairly quickly I knew this was going to be different.

    Our main player is Robert Gagno and he is autistic. I immediately like Robert, who is never without a huge smile even when plagued with anxiety in tense tournaments. I’m no expert in autism, but his condition is heartbreaking. Most of you know we’re fairly cold-hearted bastards here at Movie Freaks, so understand when I say I spent about half this movie on the verge of tears it was not out of sadness. It was a weird mix of anger and pride. As a father, I was angry at the world for Robert. He is so full of love and compassion and desire to achieve and held back by his condition. Pride, because also as a father, this kid had a great support in his parents, and refused to quit no matter the hurdle. Robert is like Rudy for nerds (says the guy who hasn’t seen Rudy, but knows it seems to be a big deal of a kid achieving against all odds in the sports world.)

    Another aspect that is becoming increasingly important to me (since I’ve been on such a documentary kick), is to have an interesting visual style. This film definitely checked that off the list. There were strange interludes where Robert was split-screened with himself, playing in an empty vortex of blackness and psychedelic lights flashing. They also were creative with the text, placing tournament placements and scores on the screen as they were playing. Its hard to explain, but it looked cool. Little touches like that may seem trivial, but it’s a documentary! Its not like you can cut in a snowmobile chase with machine guns in the second act, so those little bits help it from getting too dry.

    Kudos to the score as well. It was non-intrusive but also brought just enough of the right emotion at the right times. In a world of so many boring or useless music pieces, this film put together the right notes to make me feel Robert’s emotions in my chest.

    The film does take a shift away from pinball playing to focus more on Robert’s life dealing with autism, trying to gain his independence, and become a more self-reliant adult. Normally I would be annoyed “the pinball doc” moved away from pinball, but here it worked just fine because he had so much more story to tell. The editing both in and out of this transition of focus requires a delicate hand, and I felt they did it quite well. They didn’t lose me for a minute, and they didn’t let me down by not returning to the theme they began with.

    In closing, this was not the film I was expecting, but damn I was glad I watched it. It managed to balance being fun and light while touching on something real. It was never a downer or depressing while dealing with some obviously serious material. And that’s because of the always-smiling Robert. I wanted to high-five him, hug him, and go shoot some pinball with him. Check out Wizard Mode and spend some time with Robert Gagno.

    Grade: A

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