Jim White loses his job at an affluent high-school where he coached football, and relocates to a poor rural area, McFarland California, where his white privilege is tested. There, he learns to accept his Mexican immigrant neighbours.
White coaches the school’s cross-country team of teenage boys to not only be fast runners, but educated young men with aspirations to do more than just work on the fields of their farming community. Do they win the championship? Does the coach begin to recognize his own sense of superiority? Do the teenage boys go to college? McFarland, USA is a Disney movie, so these things are never seriously doubted.
This Kevin Costner film is set during the 1980s, but its message and conflict are attempts to rejuvenate today’s American culture that has lost its hope in the American Dream. Costner spoke to The Peak about his upcoming film and why he believes it will resonate with audiences even with a predictable story.
“Films are emotional experiences,” Costner said. “When movies are working at their very best, they become about moments that you’ll never, ever forget, and we carry the moments of films throughout our whole life.”
A hint of marital conflict, a strain in a father-daughter relationship, and a dose of economic hardship has Jim feeling like he’s being torn apart on and off the field. “Jim White had to balance his own life, his own daughters who maybe took a backseat sometimes to these boys, who may be asked a question point blank: ‘are we as important as these boys?’” Costner said.
The story is Disney-fied, but true. The boys of McFarland won nine cross-country state championships while changing aspects of a community’s culture in the process. “What makes it inspirational? Just the fact that there’s a level of authenticity,” said Costner.
According to Costner, the original script did not have this authenticity: “A writer writes a story in the way that he thinks.” Jim is presented in the film as a strict but caring coach. “As I read about Jim White in Sports Illustrated, as I read this story, to me some things that were in that script did not jive [with] what I thought would be possible. There’s no way that the results could have happened from these young men given some of the things that the character was doing,” Costner explained.
Consequently, the boys’ farmer parents recognized the value of education and they aspired for their children to have the opportunity of some other vocation. McFarland, USA follows almost every sports movie trope, but at heart it is about the power of the American dream. “And I think the things that get set in McFarland, seeing these people firsthand, up close in these fields that they’re simply working there, these incredible hours through very difficult weather conditions, every day of their life for one reason and one reason only: to advance their children and to give their children a better opportunity.”
At a time when people are calling into question their patriotism, McFarland, USA serves to inform us that the American Dream is “alive and well in McFarland.” Predictable and formulaic or not, Costner believes the film’s power is in its message: “There’s nothing more American than a parent trying to make their life better for their children.”
