Cigarette Burns: Murderball

When Mark Zupan was 18, he passed out drunk in the back of his best friend’s truck. That friend, who was also drunk, never realized Mark was in the truck bed, even after the accident, which launched Zupan into a roadside canal, where he was found 14 hours later hanging onto a branch. His neck was broken, rendering him a quadriplegic.

Mark doesn’t seem bitter about this in the 2005 film Murderball. In fact, none of the wheelchair rugby players profiled in this documentary express bitterness about their lot in life. They’re all partially paralyzed for one reason or another–childhood polio, falling off a balcony–but they aren’t seeking pity. These men are athletes, full of ambition and drive and perseverance. Murderball is about triumph, not tragedy. Once you’ve seen the sport, you’ll see that pity is unnecessary. They deserve respect. As one player says, “We’re not going for hugs. We’re going for a fucking gold medal.”

Wheelchair rugby is brutally simple. Two teams compete on a regulation basketball court. The goal is to roll across the out-of-bounds line at the opposite end of the court while possessing the ball. The opposing team will do what they can to prevent this, blocking your path, intercepting passes, and–with some frequency–ramming your chair with theirs and laying you the fuck out.

The popular misconception of quadriplegia is that it renders a person completely unable to move from the neck down. While this is true in some cases–depending on the nature of the injury that caused the condition–many quadriplegics have some limited use of their arms and legs. They can drive a car, cook dinner, have sex, and play rugby.

Murderball follows the United States team as it gears up for the Paralympics, introducing us to several players and offering their perspective on life in a chair. They are personable, funny, and candid. Among them, Zupan stands out with his tattoos, goatee, and aggression. A former classmate notes, “The accident didn’t make Zupan an asshole. He was an asshole long before that.” On the court, he intimidates opponents.

Joe Soares won gold for the US in 1996. He has a giant wall of trophies and awards in his home, but he doesn’t seem happy. Shortly after his gold medal run, the US team cut him. He sued (unsuccessfully) to get his spot back. When it didn’t happen, he took the head coaching job for Canada, bringing his inside knowledge of the Americans’ plays with him. “How does it feel,” he’s asked, “to betray your country?” To Joe, it’s not that simple. He loves America, but he needs to play, needs to win. Joe is the closest thing the film has to a villain–an adversary so single-minded that he can’t see how his drive affects his family, so driven, in fact, that he has a heart attack and must re-evaluate his life.

Finally, there’s Keith, a young man in rehab from a motorcycle accident. “He loved wheels,” his mother notes sadly, aware that one set of wheels has now permanently tied him to another. We are told that the first few years after paralysis are the most difficult. Keith is understandably depressed about his situation, but a brief meeting with Zupan gives him hope to move forward.

This is a sports documentary, and we see a number of quad rugby games. The outcome of the Paralympics is never certain, and we, as an audience, develop a rooting interest. But the players matter more than the games. Their lives, their day-to-day challenges, form the film’s heart.

One of the quad rugby players, in a moment of reflection, describes a recurring dream where he can fly. He is liberated from his chair in those moments, soaring through the air. What’s more, in his dreams he has his arms and legs back. He is whole. And then, as all dreams must, it ends, and he is back to his chair. Some people might fixate on this dream, on the desire to be “normal.” Murderball is more concerned with normalizing these men in our minds. It allows us to see them soar, to witness them as whole in waking life as well as dreams.

When I’m writing Cigarette Burns essays, I normally wouldn’t bring my life into things, but it would be impossible for me to explain this film’s impact without doing so. This is a very personal film for me, in ways that were not apparent the first few times I watched it upon its release.

Being legally blind is a very different problem from being a quadriplegic, but the nature of retinitis pigmentosa is such that I’m slowly losing a very important physical capability–one that affects my mobility, my job, my entertainment. (I found some of the game footage hard to follow during this most recent viewing. That was not the case seven years ago, when my eyes were better.) Losing a vital part of your life is scary, like should-I-blow-my-brains-out scary. Part of what helps get me through the bad times is the knowledge that there are others out there–others with RP, others with disabilities–who focus on what they have, not on what they’ve lost. The men in Murderball do not wallow in self-pity. They’re too busy being badass.

As with Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July (another personal favorite of mine), this film presents traumatic injury as a starting point, not an end. We are transformed by what happens to us in ways both positive and negative. Whether we can be happy, fulfilled people is entirely up to us.

Coming Soon:
Jesse investigates Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm (Tuesday) and I re-evaluate Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.