Director honors ice artistry
Gabe Polsky, the director of “Red Army,” the award-winning documentary about the great Cold War-era Soviet hockey team and its longtime captain, Slava Fetisov, loves and loathes hockey. He played the sport throughout his youth and in college at Yale, where he was a center for the Bulldogs. What he can’t stand is the style of American play.
“In North American hockey, they don’t encourage creativity,” he says during a chat at the Toronto International Film Festival. “In fact, when you are creative, they kind of put you down. That was really frustrating for me during my hockey career.
‘Just amazed’
“Basically, when I saw the Soviets play for the first time on a VHS tape, I was just amazed. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. In North America, the style of hockey is very primitive, in a way. It’s all about hitting and fighting and all this stuff, and I really like magic on the ice. I love creative hockey and in sport in general. I love skill. I was just mind blown. It was like jazz — it was beautiful. You just knew what you were seeing was incredible.”
Soviet hockey was also Polsky’s entry into his own heritage. The son of immigrants from Soviet Ukraine, growing up in Chicago during the 1980s amid the tensions of the Cold War, he knew it was not a cool thing to admit his parents hailed from the USSR. All of that changed when he was 13 and the hockey team on which he played hired a Soviet coach, who introduced the squad to Russian style in both practice — somersaults on ice was one of his drills — and more creative play. Polsky was entranced.
“That was really inspiring, and it made me want to know more about my history and my culture,” he says.
A couple of decades later — Polsky, 35, is a successful filmmaker, a producer of such films as “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” and “Little Birds” and the director, with his brother Alan, of the thriller “The Motel Life” — he had the opportunity to meet the heroes of his youth. To most American hockey fans, these men were part of the feared team that whipped their Western counterparts over and over again, only to have Team USA best them in the “miracle on ice” medal-round game at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics.
“Regarding ‘Miracle,’ it’s an interesting thing. I had seen that movie (of the event) when I was a serious hockey player,” says Polsky. “I thought it was a well-done movie, but there was something about it that just made my stomach churn, because I knew that it was made up by Disney, and I just thought, ‘That’s not as interesting as it could be. That’s not what it’s all about.’ Even though it’s a great story, it’s just a small part of a much bigger story.”
Quick decision
Feeling that way about the movie, when Polsky had the chance to meet his heroes, he made a quick decision: He would bring a camera crew and just start filming.
“I knew I wasn’t telling a story about hockey, that I needed to get at something really deep about how the Red Army team basically paralleled the rise and fall of the Soviet Union,” he says. “They were just basically a microcosm of everything else. That’s the story I wanted to get.”
There was plenty of archival footage for Polsky to choose from in the vast Soviet archives, and the players were cooperative — all except for the one he wanted most, Fetisov. The team captain told him “nyet” over and over again. Finally, just as Polsky was wrapping things up, the man finally agreed to sit down with the filmmaker for what Polsky thought was going to be a 15-minute interview. It was a meeting that would change the course of the film.
Fetisov was skeptical and intimidating when he and Polsky first sat down to talk, but 15 minutes turned into five hours, as the old pro recognized the director’s passion for hockey and realized he was interested in more than just another sound bite about “miracle on ice.”
“I think part of it was that he realized I played hockey and that I had a deep passion for this kind of hockey and what they did,” Polsky says. “And I’m not, ‘Oh my God! I love the Soviet Union.’ I’m happy I grew up here. I’m so thankful, but I have a lot of respect for that kind of innovation and what they did.
‘Screen presence’
“It was luck,” he adds. “It became apparent when I realized what an interesting character he was just to watch — his screen presence and stuff. The fact that he spoke English was helpful, too. And he was the captain of the team for all of the years. He was sort of the face of the Soviet team and the leader. Also, when you see
“What (these players) did on the ice was a miracle, and it’s still never been done again, that beauty. They beat you, and they beat you looking good.” Gabe Polsky, filmmaker
his story on the screen, it’s incredible. It became apparent that I had to focus this movie on him.”
Polsky’s “Red Army” was recently nominated for a Writers Guild of America award for best documentary screenplay. The nod recognizes the riveting story that the filmmaker tells of sports and politics — of players who dominated as Red Army players and would become uncertain ambassadors for their country as they tried to adapt to the American system in the National Hockey League. The film acknowledges these athletes’ place in thawing the Cold War, while honoring their artistry on ice.
‘It was embarrassing’
“To me, what was miraculous was that these guys were just the most incredible players ever and how they got so incredible,” Polsky says. “What they did on the ice was a miracle, and it’s still never been done again, that beauty. They beat you, and they beat you looking good. It was embarrassing. That’s what I wanted to share with people — that story, and how these guys lived and what they had to deal with.”