Slightly sweet, mostly bitter

Divine force guides the characters of Hoop Dreams, the 1994 documentary that follows the fates of two aspiring basketball players. By the end of the movie, you can foretell the futures of William Gates and Arthur Agee after their lives on screen.

The filmmakers initially find Gates and Agee as middle schoolers on the courts of south side Chicago. These talented ballplayers have been recruited to attend St. Joseph High School, a surburban, private Catholic school and basketball powerhouse. The overlord of St. Joe's basketball is Gene Pingatore, a Bobby Knight acolyte who propelled legendary point guard Isiah Thomas through the program and into the NBA. Thirsting to fill Thomas's shoes are Gates and Agee, and Pingatore yearns for a new star.

Fate takes over; Gates and Agee walk divergent paths. But the ghetto keeps them together. As much as they strive to overcome circumstance, adversity inhibits the fulfillment of their dreams. Many of the movie's surprises are startling because you expect the boys' lives to follow the Horatio Alger trajectory. Drugs, violence, abusive fathers--we think that hardworking dreamers don't succumb to the stereotypical problems everyone has heard of over and over, the problems that don't register except in the suburbanite's subconscious, as a 30 second clip on the local news.

When Gates and Agee triumph, we also rejoice, temporarily forgetting their insurmountable hurdles. But the slum always returns as a thicker and higher brick wall.

Hoop Dreams is hard to watch because the protagonists are controlled by unassailable forces. At the end of Gate's high school career, Coach Pingatore brashly comments, "One goes out the door, and another one comes in the door. That's what it's all about.'' As insensitive as the observation may be, we also remember how the ghetto invests its hopes in young hoopsters, how Gates's high school star turned minimum wage earning brother admits that he lives vicariously through his younger sibling. We witness Agee's mother trying to support three children on $280 per month, unable to pay the bills, living in dark except for the light of a portable lantern. There is no cure for the influence of a drug-dealing friend, or the non-support of a jailed or delinquent father, or public schooling that takes place in a de facto prison. Only miracles can redeem the protagonists, but miracles never happen in the ghetto.

As a revealing portrait of basketball and the crushing weight of urban poverty, I urge you to watch this masterpiece. And afterwords, I hope, you will have the inexorable desire to confirm your suspicions on where Gates and Agee have ended up today.