THE BIG HOUSE
dir, Vesal Stoakley, Sean Moore, Sarika Tyagi, V. Prasad, Britty Bonine, Alex Brenner, Catie DeWitt, Dylan Hancook, Daniel Kahn, Rachael Kerr, Audrey Meyers, Hannah Noel, Jacob Rich, Kevin Tocco, 2018
directed and produced by Kazuhiro Soda, Markus Nornes, and Terri Sarris
119 mins. United States.
In English.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27 – 7 PM – KAZUHIRO SODA IN PERSON!
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
(This event is $10.)

THE BIG HOUSE is the result of an undergrad course taught by Soda at the University of Michigan in 2016, alongside professors Terri Sarris and Abé Markus Nornes. U Mich’s campus boasts the the single largest football stadium in the United States (capacity: 107,601), the eponymous “Big House”, so Soda challenged his young co-directors to stick as closely as possible to his Ten Commandments while capturing eye-of-the-storm footage across two different game days – resulting in perhaps the most durable testament to his custom-developed technique. Given the filmmakers’ freedom to roam, THE BIG HOUSE is a riveting and frequently hilarious all-you-can-eat buffet of direct cinema that focuses on “everything but the game”.

While the film was shot during the 2016 election season, Soda et al do not conjecture any easy diagnoses about conservative politics or Midwestern identity. Their reluctance to directly insert politics into a sports doc is palpable, while the concurrent spectacle of football and pageantry are nearly superceded by the massive logistical coordination that makes it all possible. These ins and outs become their own discrete narrative arcs; what exhilarates is coming up for air among the cheering hordes, the ambient satisfaction of picking out real-life details while being swept up in a much bigger wave.

“We are social animals, social creatures. Sometimes we cannot endure being alone, and being individual—we have this also. We are being constantly invited to fascism. And what you see in Michigan Stadium is a demonstration of that. It feels so good when you lose yourself and feel like you are a part of a larger something. If you’re rooting for your team and wearing the same colors and singing the same song at the same time with 100,000 people, you feel good! I felt good too. Although I’m not from Michigan, and I’m Japanese. But when I was there shooting, I felt so good. Which was very scary too (laughs). And I felt a desire inside of me, to be connected with everybody else and to be lost in this crowd, to be part of this huge creature. The problem is that politicians are trying to use that, use this tendency that we have.” – Kazuhiro Soda, interviewed in Shingetsu