Air (Ben Affleck/Matt Damon, 2023)
It doesn’t really matter if you like basketball or not: Air, directed by Ben Affleck and starring Matt Damon, is a terrific feelgood drama about the creation of a shoe: Air Jordan.
I can’t claim to know Ben Affleck very well, but I did interview him once, on a Sunday afternoon in January 2008, in of all places Paris, in a hotel off Place de la Concorde.
Walking back to Gare du Nord afterwards, through the Tuileries Gardens and past the Louvre, I noticed all the Parisians, sharply dressed in moody black and grey clothes, that seemed to fit them perfectly.
I was told beforehand that Affleck could be difficult, but I found him to be personable and charming and we talked at great length about his directorial feature debut, the moving kidnapping-drama Gone Baby Gone (2007).
‘I always knew that at some point I would want to direct,’ Affleck told me. ‘Even when I was still a struggling actor looking for better parts. When I talked to crew members, I was always greeted with a lot of enthousiasm and they would happily share their stories and experiences with me. So whenever I was on set I had the feeling I was going to film school as well.’
I thought his adaptation of the Dennis Lahane novel was pretty great and I also enjoyed his subsequent efforts: the heist movie The Town (2010), his Oscar-winning Argo (2012) and the somewhat uneven but still passable crime-drama Live By Night (2016).
But Affleck, of course, is not only a director. He is an actor and a producer, as well a lot of other things. So all of a sudden it’s been seven years since he last directed a feature.
His new movie, Air, sees him reunited with his old pal Matt Damon, who basically plays a shoe salesman.
But not some ordinary shoe salesman. Damon plays Sonny Vaccaro, who dreamt up the idea for the legendary basketball shoe called Air Jordan. Which not only made a lot of money for Nike, but also gave Michael Jordan a percentage deal on each shoe sold that was previously unheard of, but what soon become the norm for other world class athletes.
Affleck surrounds Damon with other great actors like Jason Bateman (as the company’s Mr. Marketing Rob Strasser), Chris Tucker, Chris Messina, a very funny Marlon Wayans and himself (as Phil Knight, the co-founder of Nike).
Michael Jordan, funnily enough, is mostly kept off-screen, as if not to distract from the guys who made it all happen.
However, his mother Deloris is there, in another wonderful turn by Viola Davis, as the single most important person in the Jordan household to shepherd the deal and make the right choice between frontrunners Adidas, Converse and distant third Nike.
Thematically, Air is about a lot of things. It’s about passion and creativity, but it is also about the pressures of pitching, auditioning and courting. It’s about marketing and the art of dealmaking.
Even this movie, made for Amazon but released theatrically is part of continuing the Air Jordan brand, something that Affleck and screenwriter Alex Convery are very much aware of.
Air is a sports movie, with hardly any sports in it, but it is definitely about winning - and also about (the fear of) losing, and what that would mean in the lives of the principal players.
It’s also about a shoe that really is a piece of art and a joy to behold, and, probably, wear.
Do clothes and shoes really matter? I’m sure the Air Jordan means something to the people who bought them, just as the Parisians seemed to love their clothes, as they walked their children and their baby prams through the Tuileries Gardens.
So yeah, even if Air would be nothing more than a movie about marketing, it would still have value.
And in the end, it is so much more than that. It doesn’t even matter if you like basketball or not. Air is a rousing drama, with great acting, deft camerawork to keep all the great dialogue scenes interesting and a feelgood ending.
It is also a movie about admiring a true genius, and recognizing the worth of living in the age of Michael Jordan.
Not everyone can be like Michael Jordan. But for a couple of hours you can walk in his shoes, without even having to buy a pair.