We Need to Talk About Benito
Like a mild Greek tragedy, writers can sometimes be cruel like the gods, even in a movie that it's supposed to feel good
In a movie designed to please a mass audience, many of the characters considered the 'good ones' will likely achieve whatever goal they pursue. Champions (2018) is a crowd-pleaser, and by the end of the movie, you will notice that some of the 'good ones' get either a positive character arc or accomplish their respective goals. Except Benito (Alberto Nieto).
Benito is a nice guy. He has no family. He wakes up everyday at four in the morning to go and wash dishes at a restaurant to make a living. During his free time, he plays basketball. He's part of a team that participates in semi-professional tournaments. His boss, however, is a dickhead and stops allowing him to attend important games. The team performs well and reaches the final anyway. The coach, even though his main goal is to finance a trip abroad, manages to bribe Benito's boss so he can play the final match and help the team. But what is Benito's purpose in the movie?
Champions has something that resembles an ensemble cast. For simplicity, it means that it has a lot of characters to take care of. Because of time constraints, not all of them can be well-developed. Benito, for instance, doesn't have a character arc and is off-screen most of the running time. But he has a clear goal: To score a shot while facing his back at the basket. At the beginning of the movie, during the training sessions, Benito attempts to do the shot two times. The first time, he fails in a colossal manner. The second time, he gets close and manages to make the ball touch the rim of the basket.
But he will have a third chance. A crucial one.
During the tournament's final match, with only ten seconds left to play and the team down two points, Benito gets control of the ball. This is it. Either he scores or the team loses. And to make the stakes even higher, he decides to make the shot facing backwards!
His purpose in the movie is about to be fulfilled, you might say. Countless of movies have trained us for this moment. It's the climax of the third and final act. The characters are about to live happily ever after. He will score.
But guess what? He fails again!
In a counter intuitive move, after having lost the match, the team bursts in celebration. They hug each other. They hug the rival team. It's pure joy.
Regardless, it's a cruel outcome for Benito. The screenwriters strip away his only moment of glory to make a bigger point: Defeat (and a second place in a sports tournament) can also be a cause for celebration. The team, at the start of the movie, was an uncoordinated group of misfits that somehow managed to get things together, create synergy, and reach the final of a major tournament. In that scene, they don't celebrate defeat. They celebrate progress, team play, effort, etc. And the coach, who is not categorised as a disabled person (disability being a major theme), learns his lesson.
From a screenwriting point of view, which is what interest me, Benito has 'taken one for the team' (pun intended). It's sad, but he's an example of a fictional character that not only doesn't have a character arc, but also fails at achieving his goal on an individual level. Everyone else gets their 'happy ending' and fulfil their goal, except him. His individuality is lost in favour of the group outcome. From a viewer's perspective, it illustrates how a screenwriter can disregard narrative conventions at the expense of a minor character, and in the process, provide a new interpretation of the movie's title, which at first-hand may sound like a spoiler, but through Benito's failure we find out that it isn't. I suppose that when you write fiction, some sacrifices must be made. Benito was one of them.