BEFORE: How about THIS for planning, or perhaps it's just synchronicity - the U.S. Open (for tennis) is going on this week, and Serena Williams just played her last pro matches in singles. Now I hear she may continue doing doubles matches with Venus, but I guess that's a different thing. The point is, when I put this chain together, I wasn't factoring the schedule of the sport, but then again, maybe I was, on a subconscious level. I've learned there are no accidents, or if there are, they're "happy accidents", as Bob Ross called them. So it's a happy accident that I scheduled a tennis movie for this week in September.
Corey Stoll couldn't stick around for Labor Day, but Jon Bernthal carries over from "The Many Saints of Newark". Ray Liotta couldn't be here either, but I'm planning to circle back to him in October.
THE PLOT: A look at how tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams became who they are after the coaching from their father, Richard Williams.
AFTER: I guess you could also say this is an appropriate Labor Day film, because it's about tennis players putting in the work, all the hours and days of practice that were needed to play at that championship level. And then there's Venus and Serena's father, Richard Williams, who worked a night job as a security guard and also a day job cleaning tennis courts so that he'd have the money to provide for his five daughters, and also put in the work training Venus and Serena, then tracking down the right tennis coaches for them, getting them into training camps, working out the endorsement deals and such. Geez, I'm tired just WATCHING somebody do all that in a movie!
But the real point of the movie, I think, it that Richard Williams was stubborn and determined to see his daughters succeed, to the point of that being his biggest fault. He was so convinced that they were future tennis champions that he approached everything he taught them and everything he told them to do from that perspective, that they were champions in the making. To him it was a fait accompli, but perhaps somewhere in all that wishing and hoping he did things that made that reality come to be, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's true, you have do dream it before you can believe it, and you have to believe it before you can make it happen - can it be that easy, though, to turn one's dream into reality? Can just visualizing it bring it into being? I guess I saw some students in film school who were so sure that they would become famous directors, and some of them did, so maybe with enough self-confidence you can make your success happen, however you define that success. I sure didn't have that level of self-confidence, and now I wish that I did. But I digress.
In the believing, in the training, in the self-actualizing of Richard Williams' 87-page plan for his daughters, it's clear that he stepped on a lot of people's toes, he comes across here as a giant pain in the ass. He didn't want to follow the rules, or other people's advice if it contradicted his plans or goals. Shouldn't plans be a little flexible to account for unexpected bumps in the road, why did his plan have to be so rigid, as if there was only one path to success in tennis? There simply must be several paths to a championship, just like success in any other field, and most other athletes probably don't have their careers mapped out in such detail as the plans Mr. Williams had for Venus and Serena. Most athletes are probably just trying to win the next game, and they're not already making plans for the Hall of Fame. Logically, for every Venus or Serena there must be at least 999 other girls who tried to succeed in tennis and either didn't have what it took, or didn't have the resources or luck or blind determination to progress in the sport.
I don't mean to take anything away from them, I'm sure they're excellent players - but then what is the message here, that it takes more than a great player to succeed, it takes an overbearing helicopter parent to micro-manage their careers and make ill-advised decisions about which tournaments they should play in or NOT play in to increase their chances of being champions down the road? I'm sure my mother wanted me to be a musician, she started me on drums and then piano lessons and finally I gravitated toward the clarinet and saxophone, but in the end I just didn't feel enough passion for it to devote my life to practicing instruments, and to her credit, she didn't force me to continue. In high school I found more success singing, as there was a lack of good singers with bass voices, and honestly I found that much easier than playing instruments, and more fun too. And I did join some singing groups as an adult, with moderate success, but then I also had to earn a living, and singing wasn't paying any bills. Still, there's no part of me that wishes I had a mother who would force me to continue in an activity or sport that didn't thrill me - that would probably say a lot more about the ego of the parent than the abilities of the child. Just saying.
I think my sympathies lie with Richard Williams' three step-daughters, though - the ones who aren't named Venus and Serena. It does seem a bit telling that he only believed that his two biological daughters were fit to be tennis champions, and his three step-daughters got the shaft, they weren't worthy of tennis lessons? Hmmmm.... Couldn't anyone become good at tennis if they had the opportunity to, at least to some degree? This may be a debatable point, but again, it's egotistical for him to think that only his daughters with his genetic material had the right stuff. And then how would you feel if you were half-sisters with Venus and Serena, but your father didn't train you to play tennis? That's some bullshit.
There's actually very little in this film about how unusual it was at the time for black girls to even WANT to play tennis, let alone succeed in tournaments. It was a predominantly white sport back in the 1990's, and yes, there's a scene in the film when two agents offer a sponsorship because they think they can interest more black people to play tennis with the Williams sisters endorsing products - but then of course Richard Williams turned down the offer because it seemed like the agents were trying to exploit his daughters based on their race. Umm, they're offering you a big check, so who cares? Get exploited, but get the money! Mr. Williams also pulls his daughters out of the Juniors tournaments because the previous young tennis star, Jennifer Capriati, had been burned out on the circuit and then arrested for drug possession.
Pulling his daughters off the tournament circuit for several years turned out to be a double-edged sword - they were able to focus on education and they didn't get burned out by too many competitions, but then when it WAS time to turn pro, it seems they were a bit unprepared. Venus entered the Bank of the West tournament in 1995 and Serena's first event was the Bell Challenge in Quebec. But the film focuses on Venus in the Bank of the West match against Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, who was ranked number 2 in the world at the time. The implication here is that if Venus had been better prepared for tournament play, and the ways an opponent can take unlimited bathroom breaks to slow the game ("icing"), maybe she would have won that match. Instead she has to learn to lose her first pro tournament with grace, which maybe is a more important lesson?
Still, it's a weird way to end a film about a future tennis champion, by detailing her first professional loss. But, I guess you learn from your losses as well as your victories, and we all know that these two sisters do eventually become two of the best tennis players ever, so there's that. Venus has seven Grand Slam titles, and won Wimbledon five times, while Serena has 23 Grand Slam titles - and they share Olympic gold and doubles titles. I'm not an expert in the sport, but now people are saying Serena might be the greatest of all time, and I'm in no position to deny it. I just wonder what sort of message it sends out to the kids, regarding this being a viable path toward success in a particular sport - if it's that much of a struggle, it hardly seems worth it, right? Just me?
I think I like Jon Bernthal as an actor, but I'm so used to seeing him play strong but morose characters, like the Punisher or Johnny Soprano, that it's a bit unnerving here to see him play tennis coach Rick Macci, someone very friendly, open and energetic.
Also starring Will Smith (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Aunjanue Ellis (last seen in "Freedomland"), Saniyya Sidney (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Demi Singleton, Tony Goldwyn (last seen in "Romance & Cigarettes"), Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew, Danielle Lawson, Layla Crawford, Erika Ringor, Craig Tate (last seen in "12 Years a Slave"), Josiah Cross, Calvin Clausell Jr., Vaughn W. Hebron, Jimmy Walker Jr., Kevin Dunn (last seen in "The Frozen Ground"), Brad Greenquist (last seen in "The Call of the Wild"), Christopher Wallinger, Chase Del Rey, Vivienne Bersin, Andy Hoff (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Andy Bean (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Judith Chapman, Chet Grissom (last seen in "Book Club"), Dylan McDermott (last seen in "Wonderland"), Jessica Wacnik, Katrina Begin, Rich Sommer (last seen in "The Giant Mechanical Man"), Kaitlyn Christian (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Marcela Zacarias, Erin Cummings, Susie Abromeit (last seen in "Setup"), with archive footage of Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Richard Williams, Oracene Price, Rick Macci and Queen Elizabeth (last seen in "Lucy and Desi")
RATING: 5 out of 10 cans of yellow balls
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