Friday, February 20, 2015

Yale Grad Creates Hit Movie

Gabe Polsky’s ‘Red Army’ tells the compelling story of the Soviet hockey machine.

Yale Grad Creates Hit Movie
Yale alum Gabe Polsky has produced a number of films, most recently Red Army. (Photo by Patrick Meissner/Polsky Films).

Red Army, a documentary film from former Yale hockey player Gabe Polsky, has generated the type of universal acclaim that very few movies enjoy. Movie critics, film festivals – even Wayne Gretzky – have all come away in awe of Polsky’s production.

“One of the best films I’ve ever seen,” Nick Paumgartner of The New Yorker wrote. “Brilliant.”

That type of acclaim comes up time and again in Red Army reviews and has to be gratifying for any filmmaker, especially for an independent documentary. Polsky concedes that the feedback has been tremendous, though he has one comparable.

“Nothing is more fun than playing in front of a rink full of people in college,” he said.

The former Bulldog came to Yale from the Chicago suburbs in the late 1990s with dreams not of making films, but making it to the NHL. When that goal didn’t materialize, Polsky turned the creative energy he used to bring to hockey and applied it to filmmaking.

“I always worked hard in school and I knew I could fall back on my education,” he said. “After hockey, I re-oriented by passion toward filmmaking. I had an intense dedication to hockey and I knew that creative energy had to be diverted somewhere.”

In Red Army, he found an outlet that combined his passions for hockey and film – though he, and reviewers, are quick to point out that it is more than a hockey movie.

“[T]he strength of Red Army lies in its deep appreciation for the many ironies of the [Soviet hockey] situation,” writes Justin Chang in Variety, “the bone-deep complexities of national identity, and the fact that, on some level, home will always be home — as [Slava] Fetisov, who remains an active figure in the Russian hockey world, can and does personally attest.”

While demand for documentaries in theaters is typically limited, the acclaim Red Army has earned at film festivals like Cannes, where it premiered, and from reviewers has earned Polsky’s work distribution through Sony Classics. It is currently playing in select theaters, with many more opening in March.