Post-Game Show

JASON MILLER'S That Championship Season shows what the passing of 24 years can do to men who must have been something like those in Diner. In 1957, near the time that Diner's heroes talked, fought and married, a group of Scranton, Pa. high school students won the state basketball championship. Each year, four teammates hold a reunion with their former coach and attempt to recreate the hopeful, confident, if also innocent atmosphere of their high school days.

But as That Championship Season proceeds, any resemblance to Diner fades. Diner is a period film, while the men in That Championship Season have entered a new period or stage in their lives--"the heart attack season," as one says. The four best friends not only gradually voice their frustrations and jealousies but also admit to adultery, alcoholism and cocaine addiction. Despite its excesses--and its occasional melodramatic revelations and mawkish tone--That Championship Season works.

The man gather one afternoon in the coach's house and begin drinking convivially. But as the sun disappears, so too does the bantering and innocuous discussion. By morning, the men have undergone severe tests of the nature of their relationships with one another. They have embarked upon a long day's journey into night, and the movie's similarity with Eugene O'Neil's play runs fairly deep.

That Championship Season itself was a successful play several years ago, staged by Joseph Papp. To its credit, the movie avoids the temptation to stray from the play's focal points. For the most part, the film takes place in the coach's large, wooden house, whose dark paneling, airy rooms and surrounding porch recall O'Neill's description of the Tyrones' house in Journey. And while O'Neill's Mary suffers partly because she has never had a real home, the men in That Championship Season suffer because they realize they have lost their home: the basketball court where everything was understandable and visible, and where all could unite against one opponent. That Championship Season chronicles the former teammates' attempt to regain their home.

When the movie begins, George Sitkowski (Bruce Dern) is the mayor of Scranton, running for reelection. James Daily (Stacy Keach), a junior high school principal, manages his former teammate's campaign, largely financed by Phil Ramono (Paul Sorvino), an Italian businessman whose strip-mining company thrives on city leases. Tom Daily (Martin Sheen), James's younger brother, returns from a mysterious absence to join the others and Coach Delaney (Robert Mitchum). "It's amazing." Tom comments, "nothing's really changed here. Nothing. "Of course, Tom's comment overlooks the closing of his old high school; the dark desertion of its gym parallels the changed and darker nature of his old friends.

Aside from Tom's wanderings through the town early in the movie. That Championship Season could have been filmed on the stage. The few scenes in Scranton depict empty street settings whose houses look like backdrops. The limited settings suit writer director Miller well, as does the almost detached underrating cinematic raphy of John Bailey. On several occasions, the camera's frame casually includes remainders of the characters' longing for times past. As James Daily talks on the phone in his office, he glances out his window to watch young students playing basketball; when Sirkowski exercises in his office, he watches a baseball game on television. But ultimately, That Championship Season rests upon its screenplay (adapted by Miller from his play) and its actors. In several instances, the latter salvage the former.

PERHAPS BECAUSE of Miller's self-imposed time frame of one night, the almost deadening string of personal revelations may have been unavoidable. But less explanation exists for heavy-handed and calculatingly cryptic soliloquies that includes: "Marion hasn't been the same since the baby died." "I don't think I'm the man I wanted to be." "I wanted my father to respect me" (tears flowing), or, "I'm extremely popular..."

What Miller's screenplay lacks is the consistently moody, evocative tone that O'Neill establishes throughout Journey, a play whose power results in part from O'Neill's ability to make the stripping away of surfaces seem unavoidable. That Championship Season, however, contains too many manufactured twists, a claim supported by the speed with which certain personal crises are resolved.

Similarly, a series of late-night meetings between each former player and his coach stretch the boundaries of believability. As one leaves the coach's study, he says, "Coach says you're next," or "He wants to see you now."

But whenever the material becomes unduly artful or calculated, its stars rescue it. All give measured performances, and together they form a wonderful ensemble that aids Miller's purposes: basketball teammates, even a quarter of a century after their last game, can establish and retain relationships as close, demanding and forgiving as those in any family.

Bruce Dern succeeds best. In this film, he allows realistic situations to explain his feverish, nervous mannerisms. In a movie like Black Sunday, Dern's mannerisms were his character; here they serve as external manifestations of internal doubts.

It remains difficult to imagine anyone other than Robert Mitchum as Coach Delaney. With his half-closed eyes, his rugged face, his easygoing manner, he believably fashions a character who somehow understands his former players' emotions. And perhaps only Mitchum, who himself seems without a facade, could play a character who willfully overlooks layers of questions and doubts that have been accumulating on his former players for 24 years.

Miller's screenplay includes humorous interludes that create a sense of the championship team's former camaraderie. While their trophy may be a "myth," as Tom argues at one point, it holds the players together nonetheless. Similarly, the performances hold this movie together, as five men experience a varyingly painful and hopeful journey to understand what it was that made them so happy for a time.