In addition, the film ignores the fact that although streaming might remove the middleman from the money and the players, not everyone will enjoy the success of the most popular players. The film also fails to grasp that the popularity and profitability of streamers falls under the same market concerns that animate the success of the NBA. Oddly, Burke sets up a meeting with Netflix to jumpstart his fake streaming plan, a move that reads as odd given that, although liberating, Netflix is a behemoth just as much beholden to its own rules and inequities as the NBA. Burke’s plan also seems to misunderstand the freedom streaming provides. Ray Burke’s liberating plan, one that would pool more profit toward players, is really a part of an elaborate ploy to spook the owners into ending the lockout so that Burke can advance in his company. Yet ultimately the film is too enamored with those systems to lodge any meaningful critique against them. Similar concerns seems to animate High Flying Bird, as players who would be on the court are prevented from showing their talent due to people’s greed on the top. Soderbergh has talked at length in interviews about the studio conditions that prevent artists from creating work beyond the constraints of blockbusters and profitability. References are abound to the liberating qualities of “the information age” and how the current relationship between team owners and players resembles slavery in more ways than one, for example, how team owners only need players to, as Burke says, “sell their merch and inspire rap lyrics.”īy including Netflix as a plot point, director Steven Soderbergh seems to equate his own struggle as an artist under the studio system as equivalent to that of basketball players under team owners. In effect, the film uses basketball as a cypher for any exploitative economic relationships. Surprisingly this “new” business model threatens the owners enough for them to take Burke as a credible threat. Holland’s game-breaking idea is actually a simple one: holding and live-streaming matches between pro basketball players outside the confines of the NBA court, where owners, myopic enough to not know the difference between different streaming services, have no power. Star sports agent, Ray Burke (André Holland), finding his job on the line in the middle of a six month NBA lockout, contrives a way to upend the exploitative economic relationship between team owners and team players, all while attempting to manage the lifestyle and finances of his star client, number one draft pick Erick Scott (Melvin Gregg). Ostensibly, it’s also a film about revolution. It is both a film where Netflix (the film’s distributor) figures in as a major plot point and also one where men conduct backdoor business in saunas like it’s the slickest thing since buttered bread. It is also one of many recent films shot entirely on an iPhone, but its stylistic trappings are more indebted to classic Hollywood than to any new stylistic possibilities the iPhone has opened up. It’s a film about basketball, one of the most dynamic sports ever created, yet also one where the action primarily takes place in nondescript business rooms, hotel lobbies and living rooms. High Flying Bird is a film of contradictions.
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