“Next Goal Wins” (2023) is New Zealand director Taika Waititi’s latest film, a crowd-pleasing formulaic sports movie which adapts a 2014 documentary with the same title about how the head of the Football Federation American Samoa, Tavita (Oscar Kightley), hired intense soccer coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) to help the team recover from its 2001 30-0 loss to Australia and get at least one goal. After three weeks, Rongen and the American Samoan team face Tonga on November 22, 2011 in the 2014 World Cup qualification.
“Next Goal Wins” will not be remembered as either Waititi or Fassbender’s best work, but with a different director and cast, the movie would not be as memorable or enjoyable. Waititi walks the knife’s edge of cynical opportunism in his approach to the real-life story. Fassbender, the big Western name, attractive thespian, plays Rongen, the protagonist, sporting initially a big, bushy unkempt gray beard that would only come in second to Tom Hanks’ facial hair in “Cast Away” (2000) and a bleach blonde dye job unseen since “Prometheus” (2012), but the beard gets shorn soon after arriving on the island. The predominantly Samoan cast is less individuated except for Jaiya Saelua (Kaimana in their first onscreen acting role), a fa’afafine—assigned male at birth with feminine gender traits, a third gender in Polynesian culture—player on the team. When each Samoan character gets a fraction of the spotlight, they make it count, but usually provide the comedic relief to offset Rongen’s McEnroesque-intensity, open alcoholism, and expressive displeasure with the state of the team. The narrative’s trajectory holds zero suspense. The locals will teach Rongen how to become a better person, and he will teach them how to win.
If the idea of Waititi making a noble savage or Magical indigenous person movie sounds like too much to stomach, “Next Goal Wins” manages to skirt exploitation. Waititi overtly embeds the trope into the team’s approach to their predicament and leverages Western cultural tropes to manipulate Rongen and the system to get what they want and do not compromise on the values that they want to retain. Rongen is an easy mark.
Because Fassbender plays Rongen so straight, it is easy to miss how dumb his character is and easy to manipulate. It is one of the funniest, running jokes in “Next Goal Wins.” Rongen cribs lines from movies for his inspirational speeches and interviews, and his word salad attempts at sounding experienced just make it obvious that verbal expression is not this jock’s gifts. “I won’t apologize, and for that, I’m sorry.” His sense of self-importance mistakes accommodations that are available to anyone as special treatment because of his status. When offered al fresco dining, he replies, “No special treatment. I’ll sit outside.” Maybe people are not fans of the movie because it introduces a trope that the global majority may be more familiar with than Western audiences: the dumb Westerner.
Complaints of Waititi using Westerners as the focal point in “Next Goal Wins” are a little late, and probably disguise a little discomfort at those Westerners playing characters who are not the smartest ones in the room. Most of Waititi’s films have prominent white men as the protagonist or lead supporting actor. Even “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” (2016) had the amazing Sam Neill, a gruff, flawed and grieving foster dad. Waititi has a brand, and it was never to tell standalone indigenous stories, not he doesn’t support them—he was the executive producer on “Frybread Face and Me” (2023). He tells stories about life at the crossroads of neo-colonization and decolonization.
In “Next Goal Wins,” the battlefield is the pitch. Soccer has no weapons but is a metaphor for superiority with the threat of an outbreak of violence. The unspoken part of colonization is that because the indigenous lost, the winner has proven themselves to be superior, a fiction rarely held up to the light to be examined, which Waititi does in a subtle, nuanced way by framing the open ridicule in a safe, nonpolitical space, sports (somewhere Colin Kaepernick is cackling at that line). One official remarks, “Success is not in their DNA.” Soccer is a Western sport with Western rules. Jaiya points out to Rongen that no one ever taught her team, including Rongen, how to play yet the face ridicule for not innately understanding the game, not the failure of the institution or coaches. It is a ridiculous expectation that exposes the Western presumption of universality. Rongen tries to relate to his team as a fellow underdog and deriding “the imperialists,” which just leads to baffled stares from the team because, um, Rongen is one of them. It is a hilarious tongue in cheek joke about clueless allies trying to build camaraderie without doing the actual work.
One unspoken Western rule is the leader’s toxic carte blanche to rain abuse on those seen as beneath them. Rongen is initially transphobic or at least misogynistic by laying into Jaiya whenever they do anything seen as feminine such as play with their hair. When Rongen decides to push a button, which he was warned not to do, Jaiya’s masculine side emerges, and they prove that on a level playing ground, Jaiya would dominate. Jaiya speaks Rongen’s language of dominance, and the implication of their physical confrontation carries over to the denouement. The fierce, coordinated haka chant suggests that the Samoans are doing everyone a favor by choosing the peaceful life because if the conditions changed, their fierceness would crush their opponents.
Is that peaceful life also a Western imposition or an indigenous way of life? Dunno! In “Next Goal Wins,” Waititi plays a Catholic priest and narrator who remarks that the Samoans are deeply religious, and another running joke is how they stop everything to pray. It is not the first time that Waititi played a man of the cloth and made a cameo in one of his movies. He also did so in “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” though he billed his character as a minister. In real life, Waititi is an atheist with Jewish heritage, so it is an intriguing choice for him to consistently play that role. Most of his movies use religion as a backdrop, and yes, the “Thor” franchise counts. Waititi appears to be less interested as a spokesperson for religion and prioritizing the role of a religious leader as a community storyteller.
The denouement of “Next Goal Wins” alters the narrative structure from a straightforward story that the priest tells into a communal experience with eyewitnesses and participants telling the story into the immediate and distant future. Telling stories within a story electrifies and amplifies the ending. It elevates the story from the cheesy formula to an epic legend. Also Rongen’s transformation is symbolized in his ability to be authentic and tell his own tragic story, which I did not see coming and attributed his inability to use the phone as the reason that he never returns an offscreen character’s calls. It also explains why Rongen would lash out at Jaiya as a young woman.
“Next Goal Wins” distinguishes itself from the standard underdog sports formula because of Waititi’s crowd pleasing, subtle and safe approach to depicting the dynamic between first and third world rivalries and creating stories of bloodless decolonization and community.
