The Legend of Bagger Vance


The Legend of Bagger Vance is a 2000 American sports comedy-drama film directed by Robert Redford, starring Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Charlize Theron. The screenplay by Jeremy Leven is based on the 1995 book The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life by Steven Pressfield. It takes place in the U.S. state of Georgia in 1931. The film served as the final roles of Jack Lemmon before his death the following year and Lane Smith before his death five years later.
On release, the film was a box office bomb, grossing almost $40 million worldwide — only half of its budget — and received mixed reviews; criticism was targeted by several African American commentators and reviewers for employing the "magical negro" stereotype.

Plot

As an old man having his sixth heart attack while playing golf, Hardy Greaves contemplates how his late wife used to ask him why he kept playing "a game that seems destined to kill" him. Explaining his love for the game, he begins the story of his childhood idol: Rannulph Junuh.
Junuh is the favorite son of Savannah, Georgia: a noteworthy golfer from a wealthy family; he and his beautiful girlfriend named Adele Invergordon seem to have it all. While serving as a captain in the U.S. Army during World War I, Junuh is traumatized when his entire company is wiped out in battle. Though he earns the Medal of Honor, he disappears after the war, returning to Georgia years later as a broken-down alcoholic.
At the start of the Great Depression, Adele is trying to recover her family's lost fortune by holding a four-round, two-day exhibition match between Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen, the best golfers of the era, with a grand prize of $10,000, at a golf resort her father opened as the Depression struck. However, she needs a local participant to generate local interest. The young Greaves speaks up for his hero, Junuh, prompting Adele to ask her estranged lover to play.
Junuh is approached by a mysterious traveler carrying a suitcase, who appears while Junuh is trying to hit golf balls into the dark void of the night. The man identifies himself as Bagger Vance and says he will be Junuh's caddie. With Greaves as assistant caddie, Bagger helps Junuh come to grips with his personal demons and play golf again.
When the match starts, Jones and Hagen each play well in their distinctive ways, but the disengaged Junuh plays poorly and is far behind after the first round. With Bagger caddying for him and giving advice, Junuh rediscovers his "authentic swing" in the second round and makes up some ground. In the third round, he closes the gap even more, hitting a hole in one in the process. Meanwhile, Junuh and Adele rekindle their romance.
Late in the final round, Junuh disregards Bagger's advice at a crucial point and, after that, plays poorly. He hits a ball into a forest, where he has a traumatic World War I flashback, but Bagger's words help him to focus on the game. Junuh pulls back to a tie with Jones and Hagen, then has a chance to win on the final hole, but has the integrity to call a penalty on himself when his ball moves after he tries to remove a loose impediment.
Seeing Junuh has grown and matured, Bagger decides that his golfer does not need him any more. With the 18th hole left unfinished, Bagger gives the position of caddie to Greaves and leaves Junuh as mysteriously as he came.
Though losing a chance to win because of the penalty, Junuh sinks an improbable putt and the match ends in a gentlemanly three-way tie. The three golfers shake hands with all of Savannah cheering. Junuh and Adele get back together.
The old Greaves wakes up and sees a never-aging Bagger Vance on the golf course. As Bagger beckons, Greaves follows.

Cast

Production notes

Similarities to the Hindu epic ''Mahabharata''

The plot is loosely based on the Hindu sacred text the Bhagavad Gita, where the Warrior/Hero Arjuna refuses to fight. The god Krishna appears as Bhagavan to help him to follow his path as the warrior and hero that he was meant to be. This relationship was fully explained by Steven J. Rosen in his book Gita on the Green, for which Steven Pressfield wrote the foreword.

Filming

Portions of the exhibition match were set at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina, United States, considered one of the toughest in the country. The scene in which Greaves has a heart attack was shot on No. 11 of the resort's Cougar Point golf course. The final hole in the film was temporary, so the filming did not interfere with the club activities, and cost US$200,000 to build. Most of the golf scenes were filmed at Colleton River Plantation, just off Hilton Head Island. Certain segments of this film were also filmed in Savannah and Jekyll Island, Georgia.

Reception

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 43% based on reviews from 130 critics, with an average rating of 5.23/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Despite the talent involved in The Legend of Bagger Vance, performances are hindered by an inadequate screenplay full of flat characters and bad dialogue. Also, not much happens, and some critics are offended by how the film glosses over issues of racism." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 47 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+ on scale of A to F.
Film critic Roger Ebert, who gave it 3½ stars, said, "It handles a sports movie the way Billie Holiday handled a trashy song, by finding the love and pain beneath the story. Redford and his writer, Jeremy Leven, starting from a novel by Steven Pressfield, are very clear in their minds about what they want to do. They want to explain why it is possible to devote your life to the love of golf, and they want to hint that golf and life may have a lot in common". The BBC's George Perry called it a "sumptuously photographed film" but added that "in spite of being lovely to look at, it is pretentious piffle, although Will Smith shows skill and subtlety in his ludicrous role".
Time called it one of the most "embarrassing" films of recent years for its treatment of African Americans and the use of a "Magical African-American Friend".

Box office

The Legend of Bagger Vance opened at #3 at the U.S. box office, grossing $11,516,712 from 2,061 theaters. According to the Internet Movie Database, the film's total gross came to $30,695,227, far short of its estimated $80 million budget.

Soundtrack

The now out-of-print soundtrack to The Legend of Bagger Vance was released on November 7, 2000. It was mostly written by Rachel Portman, except for tracks one, thirteen and fourteen, which were written by Fats Waller, Muggsy Spanier and Duke Ellington, respectively. The score for this movie was the last to be recorded at CTS Studios in Wembley before the scoring stage's closure and demolition.
; Track list
  1. My Best Wishes
  2. The Legend of Bagger Vance
  3. Savannah Needs a Hero
  4. Bagger Offers to Caddy for Junuh
  5. Bagger & Hardy Measure the Course at Night
  6. The Day of the Match Dawns
  7. Birdie
  8. Junuh Sees the Field
  9. Hole in One
  10. Junuh Comes Out of the Woods
  11. Bagger Leaves
  12. Old Hardy Joins Bagger by the Sea
  13. Bluin' the Blues
  14. Mood Indigo