Preparing for his New York Film Academy thesis in 2017, Gabriele Fabbro had narrowed down his options to two ideas. The first film concept was about an immigrant family escaping. The second was about billiards, based on a memory from when he was a child in Italy. Most people suggested he make the first film, given the relevance of the subject matter in today’s political climate. Moreover, aside from the challenge of making billiards interesting on-screen, the second film concept also would have minimal dialogue, another cinematic red flag.
But, Mr. Fabbro bucked the popular opinion and chose the second concept, turning it into the short film 8. Well, the rest of us can thank him, for he has blessed us with an original, mesmerizing and visually stylish film that not only deserves the many awards and nominations it has since garnered, but also breathes new life into the billiards movies canon.
Filmed over eight days in March 2018 (at the First Street Pool and Billiards Parlor in Los Angeles), 8 is a story of love and redemption told over the course of two pool matches played at Lucky Lizard Billares, a few miles away from the New Mexico border.
The film opens with Jack (Esteban de la Isla), a selfish, sexist, pool hustler cheating a local rube by making what appears to be near impossible shot pocketing two balls, but is, in fact, an illegal double-hit stroke with the cue tip hitting the cue ball and then a second object ball.
Shortly after, Jessie (Jordan Knapp) enters to a chorus of muted whispers and furtive glances. Jack makes her for an easy mark and challenges her to three games of 8-ball, confident his pomp, swagger, and faster-than-the-eye (illegal) shots will empty her pockets. But, Jessie is unflappable, and Jack quickly realizes that his cheap bag of tricks is no match for her flawless and silent game. Before leaving with his money, she breaks her silence only to reproach him by saying, “Cheating doesn’t make you a player.”
Jack may have been humiliated, but he is also love-stricken as well as enlightened, believing there is a path to being a worthy and honest opponent, should they play again. We watch him endure a relentless training routine, in effect learning the game honestly for the first time.
When that magical rematch does occur, the tension is palatable. The pool playing is quickly intercut with a mix of eye glances and close-ups of the players and the table from all sorts of different camera angles. Undergirding the tête-à-tête is the powerful score by composer Sean Goldman, with different musical compositions capturing the ever-changing emotional dynamics of the game. In a match with no dialogue, the “music becomes the script,” according to Mr. Fabbro.
Tipping the hat to Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money, Mr. Fabbro interweaves some highly original billiards montages. But, his cinematic influences run far deeper. As Mr. Fabbro shared with me in an interview, his movie’s style was much more affected by some of Italy’s greatest directors, such as Sergio Leone, whose landmark films brilliantly used subtle actions and gestures rather than words to tell a story; Federico Fellini, who used exaggerated gestures to breathe life into characters; and especially, Bernardo Bertolucci, whose “unmotivated camera movements” created visual contrast and thus excitement.
For billiards movies fans, 8 should be 18 minutes of absolute pleasure. However, purists may get turned off by the bizarre rules of eight-ball that govern the two matches. In these games, players alternate after each shot, regardless if they sink a ball.
When I pressed Mr. Fabbro about why he chose to invent rules for an otherwise straightforward game, he shared that in Jessie’s perfection, she would not miss a shot, and therefore there would be no tension. Breaking the rules was a necessity to create excitement and intimacy within the games. Given the monotonous and humdrum billiards sequence that plague too many films and television episodes, I give my full approval to such creative license. I hope the billiards community will, too.
8 premiered at the Beverly Hills Film Festival in April 2019. The film is now available to watch on Amazon in the US.
