rollerball

Despite being the decade that launched Star Wars, science fiction films in the 1970s were a much more literate bunch than they are today. It was as if producers were still trying to grasp all that Stanley Kubrick showed was possible (both technically and thematically) in 2001: A Space Odyssey while maintaining the escapist façade handed down from magazine covers like Amazing Stories. They aspired to social commentary, critique and prognostication. And even if those ambitions sometimes exceeded the material at hand, it made for some interesting cinematic experiments.

Rollerball, for example, adapted from a short story by William Harrison, struggles to carry the weight of all social and political demands placed upon it by director Norman Jewison (In the Heat of the Night). There’s really not enough plot there to support an entire movie. But the cream that rises to the top is a powerfully understated performance by James Caan and an eerily prescient vision of a future wherein corporate interests control not only professional sports but also the entire world.

The game of Rollerball itself is a rather preposterous combination of hockey, ruby and motocross with players scooting around a circular track on roller skates beating each other senseless over a 20-pound silver pinball. The Spartacus of the sport is Jonathan E (Caan), whose celebrity has become bigger than the game itself. And that is something that the executive class (represented by John Houseman) simply can’t afford to risk. Their world revolves around content and weak-minded worker bees that accept comfort in exchange for freedom. Jonathan E’s accomplishments are far too inspiring to be tolerated…hence he must be removed, one way or the other.

Inspired by Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Rollerball adopts the same cold, clinical aesthetic style and even incorporates a good bit of off-putting classical music. The film’s violence, however, is much less shocking; perhaps because professional sports today have already achieved such ridiculous heights of glorified mortal combat. Caan is completely believable though as the experienced superstar, passing on his love for the game to the next generation, the rules of which he is now only beginning to question.

Rollerball parcels out the sci-fi elements of its story in almost casual fashion, letting the audience sort out social and technological changes as they go. Jonathan’s trip to visit the all-knowing supercomputer in Geneva is one of the few outright futuristic images in the film…and even that looks like nothing more than a Progressive Insurance office. Other predictions are spot on: the digitization of all the world’s libraries, home DVRs, even Jonathan’s planned retirement speech bears an uncanny resemblance to the hubbub surrounding LeBron’s “Decision” aired by ESPN.

In the end, its not so much the action that happens in the arena that makes Rollerball memorable, but the details of a world that bears too close a resemblance to our own. And isn’t that the goal to which the best science fiction should aspire? If you need more convincing, read Julie Kirgo’s liner notes on the new blu-ray limited edition from Twilight Time. Released in a startlingly detailed new hi-def transfer, the disc also includes a bevy of special features, including two audio commentaries, two comprehensive featurettes, trailers and an isolated score track. Only three thousand copies are available exclusively at .