I think the question is - if you’re in the “Kit won fair and square camp”, what’s the mechanic that makes the ball leave her hand after her hand hits the ground? It doesn’t appear to me that it was knocked loose - her hand doesn’t really hit the ground so hard it that it would be impossible for anyone to have held onto something. I always thought it was a result of her head hitting the ground hard enough (she had pulled off the mask & helmet) that she lost all control of voluntary muscles for a second. That’s why her fingers just relax as her hand hits the ground.
And while I hate to play the “If you’ve never” card too, the truth is if you’ve never had your bell rung like that, you have no idea of what it feels like. You can literally lay on the ground for a few seconds, totally aware of everything that’s going on, but with zero power to move a single muscle in your body.
I asked my wife last night, out of the blue, if she remembered the scene and if Dottie dropped it on purpose. She looked at me like I was a moron. “What do you mean? Of course she dropped it on purpose! That was the point! I’d do the same thing for my sister!” It never crossed her mind that it was unintentional, and I was an idiot to suggest it.
Of course my wife can’t watch sports with me because she always feels bad for the losing team. Unless it’s Tom Brady who she hates for some reason. But even if he has a really bad game she feels bad for him.
That’s pretty much what I thought. In the struggle, she lost momentary voluntary control over some muscles in her hand. Probably the impact of the arm and wrist against the ground had something to do with this as well.
But anyway, I’ve thought some more about this and I think maybe the film is purposefully ambiguous. Maybe Dottie did a terrible thing by trying to be nice to her sister. Or maybe Dottie did a great thing by trying not to be nice to her sister. Maybe there’s no answer to the question of which it was… Maybe it’s not necessary to the story that we know. I don’t know, I’ll think about it.
Interesting point though - either way the moral is that Kit wanted it more than Dottie did. Dottie was the better player, but Kit’s utter devotion wins the day.
I think we can probably all agree that no matter how bad the hit, Kit woudl never have dropped that ball. (Can’t we?)
I think another, interesting debate then is whether or not dropping the ball purposefully was a good or beneficial thing to do for Kit. It seems there are some who believe that dropping it on purpose is Dottie being a protective older sister, while others think it’s messed up because it deprives her of a true win.
What I think I’m seeing is that Geena Davis has a grip on the ball and is supposed to lose it when her hand makes contact with the ground. She does not want to just fling it away, as that does not make for good drama. But the consequence is that her hand is tense enough to retain control of the ball all the way down, then it hits the ground and her fingers relax and the ball rolls loose.
Let me be clear: I’m not saying that *Dottie *dropped the ball on purpose. I’m saying that *Geena Davis *did, because she was acting and the scene called for the ball to pop loose. The problem this creates for me is that it makes it hard for me to tell if Dottie is doing it on purpose or accidentally, because of the way it’s shot.
