Jonathan E is not the hero you’re looking for
In 1975, my dad took 13-year-old me to see Rollerball at the Odeon Cinema in Renfield Street, Glasgow. The queue for the box office stretched right round the block and we ended up seeing Dad’s Army instead, which was quite a tonal shift from what I was expecting, but at least I got an ice cream and a night out. We eventually saw Rollerball a couple of weeks later. As a sidenote my dad took me and a bunch of other 6 year olds to see 2001 A Space Odyssey for my birthday in May 1968. I remember the apes but not much else, but I blame my dad for infusing me with a lifelong love of sci-fi.
Rewatching Rollerball now, I was surprised by how well it stands up as a piece of storytelling. But that’s probably because it deals with one of the most basic human questions: what is freedom worth and what does it cost?
Jonathan E (James Caan) is a veteran Rollerball player for the Energy Corporation’s Huston team. In this future, nations no longer have any meaning. Earth is ruled over by a collection of Corporations: Energy, Housing, Luxury, Transport, Food, and Communication. We are told there is no want or hunger and no wars, though there had been corporate wars in the past, even after nation states crumbled. The game of Rollerball replaces the day-to-day need for violence and struggle for the populace, but it’s not a ‘Hunger Games’ deal where districts vie for advantage through the contest. Whichever team wins or loses has no impact on the functioning of the corporations. It’s simple ‘bread and circuses’ for the masses.
In that context, while Jonathan enjoys every luxury imaginable because of his status as a top Rollerball player, he has no more freedom than anyone else on the planet. His wife was taken from him because a corporate executive ‘wanted her’ although there’s a reference that she wanted to leave him anyway. But Jonathan loves the game. He loves his team. And he loves to play.
So when Energy Corporation Executive Bartholomew (masterfully played by John Houseman) tells him the Executive want him to retire before this year’s final, he considers the unthinkable: disobedience.
Cann’s acting choices are interesting here. Confronted by Bartholomew, he speaks quietly, acting with respect and diffidence. All he wants to do is understand why. But – to paraphrase one of the elders in The Matrix Revolutions – ‘comprehension is not a requisite of cooperation’.
It becomes clear as Jonathon continues to defy the corporations and the body count rises in the Rollerball finals matches, that the reason the Corporations want him to quit is that he has become more popular than the game, more popular – perhaps – than the corporations.
On a simple reading, this is the triumph of the individual against the monolithic and soulless corporations. I’m pretty sure 13-year-old me would have cheered on Jonathan’s disobedience in ‘sticking it to the man’.
But Jonathan’s lesson is destructive rather than creative. From what we see in the movie, everyone has work and food and income. Some are better off than others. This is the unfortunate truth of any functional society so far in history. But we don’t see anyone being tortured or abused (except on the Rollberball field).
If the movie shows humanity enjoying peace and plenty, albeit with personal freedom limited in certain respects, does that mean the whole system should be torn down? Every society requires the individual to comply with its rules. We can’t all just do as we please, particularly if that negatively impacts the well-being of others. In one scene Bartholomew and the other executives agree that they’re not going to simply ‘disappear’ Jonathan for his disobedience: there’s some semblance of a moral compass on display there. We know what the corporations provide in exchange for labour and obedience. Jonathan doesn’t have a competing philosophy. All he has is a stubbornness to keep playing even if that means the death of everyone around him and possibly his own end.
When he stands triumphant in the carnage of the final game at the end of the movie – the cries of the crowd chanting his name ringing in his ears – I can only imagine the descent into violence and suffering that will follow if his lesson is taken to heart by those who see it. He’s not a hero. And if the triumph of the individual just means killing and more killing, it’s not something to be celebrated.