Feb. 20, 2007
 
NOT ABOUT WINNING:'We Are Marshall' Heading Into Its Final Weeks Before the Whistle Blows
 
By Tony Rutherford
Huntington News Network Writer
 
Huntington, WV (HNN) – Believe it or not, “We Are Marshall” heads toward the conclusion of its theatrical run. It’s still doing four shows daily at the Marquee Pullman, but it’s now in one of the smaller auditoriums. How long it remains there, depends on the number of Thundering Herd fans that venture to see it again or for the first time.
 
Reflecting back on the film rather than the hoopla when the stars and filmmakers walked the streets of Huntington and campus of Marshall University, you find a wide disparity of opinions on what part touched you the most.
 
One of the most significant comes when Red sits alone in the chapel confounded about the team’s loss to Morehead. Jack (McConaughey style) strolls up and sets down beside him. Attempting to persuade Dawson to return to coach the team for the Xavier game, Lengyel addresses what will be a lengthy time frame of recovery of the community and the football team.
 
“That’s when we will honor them,” he tells Dawson referring to a date in the future when the Thundering Herd rises from what will seem like endless losing seasons to compete for championships. Ironically, neither coach knew that day would ever come. Dawson left after the 1971 season. Lengyel would be fired a few years later for his losing record.
 
Numerous scenes have also been suggested as “most touching,” including one where the WVU team has a cross and MU on the back of their helmets, Dawson showing up in the rain to hug his wife after she feared he had perished with the team, when Nate Ruffin despite an obviously painful injury that “my shoulder’s fine,” or, perhaps, when Dawson tells Lengyel he can’t continue scouting: “How can I ever look another mother and tell her that I will take care of her son?”
 
Despite which one or ones you have particular emotional feelings, you have only a few weeks left to catch it in the theatre on a big screen with others in the audience. And, depending upon your choice of times, you just might gain a once revered ‘private screening’ for the simple price of admission.
 
Although Kate Mara and Ian McShane portray “composites” for cheerleaders and parents who lost their sons, the interplay between the grieving fiancé and father-in-law to be symbolize the heartbreaks of many and as the credits begin rolling, the different journeys taken in dealing with the loss.
 
Mara offers to return her engagement ring. McShane wants her to keep it so she will forever remember his son. Then, as the Young Thundering Herd takes the field, he gains a sense of divine unconditional love --- he tells her to go to California; she has a full life ahead beyond Huntington, beyond Marshall, and beyond his son.
 
If you have only watched “We Are Marshall” in a crowded auditorium, you will likely find “new” revelations and feelings the second or third time through the projector. Despite having watched it thrice, I could not find the sheer subtlety of director McG’s symbolic grief process represented by each character in the production.
 
It took a glance at an Los Angeles Times review to gain that enlightenment.
 
So, before the projector’s light fades to black, do yourself a favor and venture back to the movie that in many ways changed, yet united, the community … “We Are … Marshall,” still showing, but not for long!