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Sports in the US, much like Hollywood, presents itself
as a celebration of star power and those who make it, while
rarely pausing to examine the many more who are discarded,
exploited, and very often ultimately destroyed human beings.
Unless, that is, their stories render them passing curiosities
as profitable, lurid gossip fodder for the tabloids.***
The sports drama Sugar is a rare treat in that regard,
a tenderly told tale about aspiring professional ball players
in a game that has evolved into ruthless baseball capitalism.
Co-directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who first grabbed
attention with the splendid, race-conscious Half Nelson,
Sugar delves with uncommon sensitivity and uncanny scrutiny,
into the reality-based plight of one of the many promising
workingclass immigrant Latino youth brought to the US by
baseball profiteers, to compete for the barely existing
few positions on the minor league teams as an unlikely stepping
stone into big time sports.***
Algenis Perez Soto projects a gentle radiance as Miguel,
a vulnerable Afro-Dominican teen transported from his impoverished
San Pedro De Macoris village to Arizona and then Iowa. Miguel
is determined to fulfill his sweatshop worker mom's hopes
for him, as he aspires to the immigrant American Dream.***
But he's feeling more than a little homesick, emotionally
isolated, and without any grasp of the English language
beyond some sports slang. And lacking subtitles while succumbing
to a bit of stage fright on the mound, are the least of
his compounded predicaments. Miguel, as with all the other
eager athletes preceding and following him on that precarious
and punishing competitive food chain, is worth no more as
a human being to his greedy, fickle handlers (claiming a
third of any income), or his opportunistic farm country
white host family, than the variable quality of his impressive
curve ball. And when that fails, Miguel must agonize over
his priorities and what values really matter in life, as
ideas about fame and fortune rudely collide with notions
of enduring personal fulfillment on this planet.***
This exceptional and rare film touching on the bittersweet
US immigrant of color experience, does falter when it comes
to one important aspect of this particular story. And that's
the dual exploitative nature of Afro-Dominicans in baseball
here. Abused immigrants twice over already, since they're
subjected to racism in their own land, these athletes with
roots in San Pedro De Macoris were originally uprooted from
other countries, in particular Haiti and Jamaica, to cut
cane in that sugar growing region of the DR.***
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