George Clooney’s “The Boys in the Boat” is a nostalgic true story for a divided America.

With The Boys in the Boat, in theaters for Christmas, director George Clooney has made a flawless sports movie, telling the true story of a humble college rowing team that united Americans across class divides and the expanse of a great but troubled nation. Boys is nostalgic and grounded in history, but it speaks directly—and deliberately—to our time.

Things are hard in 1930s Washington State. The Great Depression rages, work is scarce, and hope is even scarcer. Young Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) struggles to keep himself fed as he studies at the University of Washington, sleeping at night in a wrecked car in a shantytown. By day he studies and pulls a shift at a factory—if he can get the work. When he hears that a position on the university crew team comes with a bed and a stipend, he grabs an oar.

Joe is not the only rower having a hard time making ends meet, and the crew must compete against much better-funded teams, teams with full bellies and trust funds. Harvard is a powerhouse, Yale a serious contender, and Cal-Berkeley the local rival. But something clicks in the Washington team as they start winning races, something that will eventually take them to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Along the way, they become a symbol of and for Americans: knocked down but ever rising again.

The movie is excellent, shot with loving attention to the sound of a blade slapping a wave, the heave of an oar, the poetry of a shell cutting through the water like a dagger. Turner plays Joe with quiet reserve, balanced by his lively love interest, Joyce (Hadley Robinson). Clooney, no stranger to vintage sports films after directing 2008’s Leatherheads, manages to make an austere and esoteric sport not just interesting but exciting. …

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