Pacino scores — ‘Paterno’ still loses
Joe Paterno was the winningest coach in NCAA football history, with a 61-year career at Penn State. It all came tumbling down in 2011 when his former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, was charged with 52 counts of sexual molestation of minors. Paterno inevitably became part of the story as the media and other investigators pushed to find out if he and university officials covered up Sandusky’s actions out of fear their revelation would hurt the university and its football program.
What did Paterno know and when did he know it? Although Sandusky is in prison and Paterno died in 2012, questions remain about the case. Did Paterno know what Sandusky was up to and fail to report it in a timely manner? Did he use his considerable clout at Penn State to persuade the university not to report Sandusky to law en-
forcement in 2001? Or was he simply so focused on football that he either intentionally turned a blind eye to what was going on, or failed to process it?
All of those questions, and more, are raised in the Barry Levinson film “Paterno,” starring Al Pacino and airing on HBO on Saturday, April 7. There is an answer to the questions in the film, but it feels more scripted than organic to Paterno’s story as it’s told here.
The script is weak and the direction is weaker, as Levinson tries to walk a fine line on the issue of Paterno’s involvement for the sake of the tacked-on finale. Fortunately, Pacino’s performance counterbalances the problems with the film, as do solid performances by Kathy Baker as Paterno’s wife, Sue, and Riley Keough as journalist Sara Ganim, who would win a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the sordid case.
Pacino plays Paterno like an Italian American Lear, an aged king who is losing his perspective and more as his realm is being pulled out from under him. Although he was not officially charged with covering up the scandal, there were enough questions about Paterno’s knowledge of Sandusky’s activities to prompt him to announce he would step down as Penn State’s head coach at the end of the season. Instead, he was fired by the university, whose officials were trying to cover up their own complicity. Paterno was out with only four games left to play that season.
Sue Paterno tries to support and protect him. His sons, his daughter Mary Kay (Annie Parisse) and friends try to get through to him that his entire career is in trouble if it can be proved that he failed to report Sandusky to the cops. Paterno saw things, he admits, but he followed procedure, reporting them to school officials. If they didn’t follow through beyond that, it’s not his fault.
But did he do that consistently and in a timely fashion? Or did he wait too long because he was either in denial, or because he would do anything to protect football at Penn State?
Pacino shuffles around the house in a sweatshirt and baggy khaki trousers, his eyes magnified through the tinted lenses of his oversized glasses. He is shellshocked by what is going on around him and frozen because he cannot figure out the play on scandal. His entire career was rooted in creating strategies for victory over opponents. Now he has met his match in the form of a scandal that, like an everwidening sinkhole, is pulling everyone under who should have taken action and in a timely way.
Keough, who starred in the first season of Steven Soderbergh’s “Girlfriend Experience” on TV, fully disappears into the role of a young local newspaper reporter who follows her instincts and ignores stonewalling efforts by the school and others. She and Baker beautifully augment Pacino’s brooding performance.
Levinson errs, though, in first making the choice to focus primarily on Paterno, and then failing to develop other aspects of the story that would have helped us understand why Paterno is feeling cornered and indecisive. We see other university officials conspiring here and there, but what isn’t adequately dramatized is that the cults of football and of masculinity direct the actions of Paterno and others. One of the better scenes underscores this as students rally in front of Paterno’s house after he’s been canned. For them, it’s all about “Joe Pa” and what he’s done for Penn State football. Whatever Sandusky did may have been sick and destructive to young lives, but what did that have to do with Penn State’s quest for victory on the gridiron?
Levinson manipulates viewers by controlling information in service to the “big reveal” at the end of the film — a reveal that fails to have the intended impact on the story because the proper foundation was not established.
But, hey, if you’re going to make a half-baked film about a potent, exhaustively covered real-life event, make sure you hire Pacino to make your work look better than it is. Tossing in Riley Keough and Kathy Baker wouldn’t hurt, either.