He’s the first baseball player to ever unanimously win Most Valuable Player twice. He was the most sought-after free agent this offseason, and it was nearly impossible to check baseball news without running across rumors about what team he’d sign with. He’s gaining comparisons to Babe Ruth for his two-way status as both a skillful pitcher and hitter. In fact, Topps, the leading company for baseball cards, released two one-of-a-kind baseball cards pairing his authentic signature with Ruth’s (one as pitchers and the other as hitters.) Some say he’s the greatest baseball player of all time, or at least in recent memory. It’s difficult to understate the fever pitch surrounding the newly-minted Los Angeles Dodger Shohei Ohtani, a Japanese-born player who has become a sensation in the States during his MLB tenure these past six seasons. It might still be early in his career, as he only turns 30 next year, but at the time of such enthusiasm around his talents, it arguably makes sense to take a breath and survey his accomplishments so far through a documentary.
Director Toru Tokikawa’s Shohei Ohtani: Beyond the Dream reflects on Ohtani’s history. It frames his life through interview clips from players Ohtani himself has respected over the years (Pedro Martinez, who doubles as the narrator, and Hideki Matsui and Yu Darvish, fellow Japanese MLB stars, for example), as well as other men who have made significant impacts on his career (such as his former manager Joe Maddon, his former manager in Japan Hideki Kuriyama, and Ohtani’s agent). We also see plenty of interview footage from Ohtani himself, some of which even includes his reactions to clips from the other interviewees. The documentary starts in his youth but stops short of Ohtani’s recent news, including the UCL tear in his throwing elbow that will sideline him from pitching (but not hitting) until at least the 2025 season. For diehard Ohtani fans, the film is essential as it offers plenty of self-reflections from Shohei himself, giving glimpses into his decision-making and philosophies.
This documentary may not land as well for casual baseball fans who catch a game here or there. In its dedication to revealing some of the intricacies of Ohtani’s processes, it doesn’t do much to give a straightforward, thorough narrative of his career thus far. It’s short on statistics, so you’ll have to look up his win-loss record, batting averages, or home runs on your own. You’ll find the opposite here if you’re a fan of Jon Bois’ documentaries that use stats to create narratives. At times, the documentary slips into a curious circular pattern, rotating at length on things like how much deliberation went into whether Ohtani could be a two-way player.
It is easy to walk away from this documentary feeling that Ohtani is open and friendly in his communication but is still secretive about many aspects of his life and career. Although I have a much better sense of how others feel about him, primarily through some great moments of transparency from Darvish and Kuriyama, I don’t feel like I’ve walked away with a sense of Ohtani himself. I know the shortcomings of speculating on some inherent “authenticity” of celebrities (or anyone, for that matter). Still, our sense of celebrities is constructed through the media, and other than showing him as an excellent player, the film doesn’t paint a solid, unique image of who Ohtani is. I began this film worried it would be a hagiography, but ultimately, the doc makes his story seem a little dull when there must be many more dynamic ways of framing his life thus far.
What complicates this from a filmmaking standpoint is that the L.A. Angels, Ohtani’s former team, have not been major playoff contenders in recent years. The only big game the documentary focuses on is Ohtani’s role as closing pitcher in the final game of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, where he struck out Angels teammate Mike Trout to clinch the international series for Team Japan over Team USA. Although this was an exciting moment for baseball in Ohtani’s home country and a highlight of his career thus far, the documentary doesn’t spend significant time on it compared to other aspects of its subject matter.
With that said, some people might find this simple, straightforward, in-their-own-words approach to a ball player’s career refreshing, especially since sports storytelling in America, during things such as pregame shows, can be bombastic. In Beyond the Dream, it’s often unclear what the unseen/unheard interviewer might have been asking players since non-sequiturs occur after interview splicing, but perhaps the rawness and wandering nature of the doc allows us to access a somewhat desensationalized image of Ohtani. And, perhaps, during a winter where some MLB fans may have been tempted to check for Ohtani updates more than once a day, getting a calm-and-collected portrait of him could be a nice change.
I hope at the end of Ohtani’s career, we get a more structured, engaging documentary that can give a complete image of who he was as an athlete. For now, Shohei Ohtani: Beyond the Dream offers baseball fans some good-natured opinions on Ohtani and reflections from the man himself.
Rating: 5/10
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