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Sugar Is One Sweet Tale
Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden are ready for the majors with their follow-up to Half Nelson
L to R: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck direct Algenis Perez Soto in Sugar (2009). Photo: Fernando Calzada/Sony Pictures Classics
Following the screening of their new film, Sugar, at the recent Bahamas International Film Festival, I had the good fortune to spend some time with Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, the acclaimed moviemaking team behind Half Nelson. While we spoke outside the theater in the gentle Bahamian night air, we saw a rat nosing through an old popcorn tub. It occurred to me that its presence in this unpretentious, un-touristed sliver of Nassau was a strikingly real contrast to the opulent, resort-based festival we were attending, and somehow it all seemed very appropriate.
Fleck, 32, and Boden, 29, are a savvy, passionate and talented duo. Partners in life, of the pen and behind the camera, the two met, appropriately enough, on a student film set in 1999, when Fleck was a student at NYU and Boden at Columbia.
In 2003, Fleck’s thesis short, Struggle, about an incident of racial tension in the life of a Black Panther party member, went to Sundance. Shortly after, he and Boden notched their first collaboration with the documentary short Have You Seen This Man?, which toured the festival circuit and showed on both PBS and IFC. They then began writing Half Nelson, the 2006 indie hit that made an Oscar nominee of star Ryan Gosling.
They wrote the feature length script together and decided to start production on a short version called Gowanus, Brooklyn in order to attract investors. It was a decision that paid off when the truncated project won the Short Filmmaking Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and was then accepted into the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.
From there, they launched into production on the feature-length film, which Fleck directed and Boden produced and edited. In addition to Gosling’s Oscar nod, the film won two Independent Spirit Awards, three Gotham Awards and critics awards from Boston to Dallas.
Sugar marks Fleck and Boden’s second feature collaboration. Once again they worked as a team to write the script, and this time to direct; Boden is also credited as editor and executive producer.
Throughout their short but productive careers, Fleck and Boden have proven they have a razor sharp read on reality and a steady commitment to skillfully reflecting it in their art. Half Nelson was a gritty depiction of a teacher’s life in inner-city Brooklyn and Sugar continues the moviemakers’ exploration of the toll that poverty and desperation can take on a dreamer’s optimism.
In the case of their latest offering, this theme is set against the backdrop of professional baseball and the life of Miguel “Sugar” Santos, who tries to lift his family out of poverty by working his way up from the dusty Dominican sandlots to the American minor and major leagues.
Although Sugar is fictional, there are obvious truths in every moment, which slowly and meticulously unfold through gorgeous cinematography (courtesy of Andrij Parekh, whom they previously collaborated with on Half Nelson) and careful storytelling, revealing a world where life struggles to survive just outside of our sightlines, just around the corner from the marquee.
The narrative follows Sugar as he signs with an American minor league team and leaves his home in the Dominican Republic for the first time. The neighborhood celebrates, toasting Sugar’s future as he says goodbye to his family, his girlfriend and the unfinished house that he has been building on weekends for his single mother and elderly grandmother.
Sugar ends up on a minor league team in Iowa, where he is housed with an embarrassingly naive yet endearing older American couple who speak no Spanish. He is introduced to their granddaughter, who tries to befriend him, but her strict Christian values and middle-class, suburban, white friends prove too much of a cultural barrier for a relationship to blossom.
Stranded on a completely foreign cultural island, Sugar soon learns that although he is talented, his talent alone doesn’t guarantee him a future in Major League Baseball.
Sugar is an American story about immigration, major league competition, coming of age and struggle. As in real life, there is injustice without any tangible antagonists; life unfolds with drama, but without fights, showdowns or other clichés. This is original storytelling in that it reflects truth and artfully tells a tale with attention to detail and integrity. The result is an example of finely crafted, lyrical, moving cinema.
Berkeley, California native Fleck is himself a longtime baseball fan and was intrigued by the extensive training camps in the Dominican, where major league teams sign players for a fraction of what they pay players from U.S. colleges and high schools.
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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT 
- Comment by Kate on 6/22/09 at 12:08 am
I just want to let people know that the story for “Sugar” is based on or inspired by the documentary “The New Americans” in which one element focuses on two Dominican baseball players and their lives in MLB. Check it out. It’s on DVD and it’ll be rebroadcast on PBS in July on Global Voices. If you like the story for Sugar or are interested in the lives of immigrant athletes, definitely check out “The New Americans”.
- Comment by Shoe Italian on 7/08/09 at 2:47 pm
Half Nelson was a great movie
- Comment by San Diego Weddings on 7/08/09 at 2:52 pm
Wow, can’t wait to see Sugar. 35mm cameras are awesome!
- Comment by Cheap Notebook Laptop on 7/08/09 at 2:57 pm
Ryan Fleck is Awesome. MY cousin went to school with him
- Comment by Crazy Vision on 9/10/11 at 12:07 pm
thanx for shring this ..
please feel free to visit my blog asalah
This story was published in the Spring 2009 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
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