John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection An Immersive Look at a Driven Tennis Player
This unique film revisits the rich bounty of 16-mm-shot footage of the left-handed tennis star John McEnroe, at the time the world's top-ranked player, as he competes in the French Open in 1984. Close-ups and slow motion sequences of McEnroe competing, as well as instances of his notorious temper tantrums, highlight a "man who played on the edge of his senses."
Far from a traditional documentary, Faraut probes the archival film to unpack both McEnroe's attention to the sport and the footage itself, creating a lively and immersive look at a driven athlete, a study on the sport of tennis and the human body and movement, and finally how these all intersect with cinema itself.
Winner of the Most Compelling Living Subject of a Documentary Award at the Critics' Choice Documentary Awards. Official Selection at the Berlin International Film Festival.
"A witty and contagiously impassioned ethnographical study." - Rory O'Connor, The Film Stage
Running Time
96 mins
Year
2018
Kanopy ID
6455952
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Comments (1)
Perhaps the best sports documentary I've ever seen. Unlike most, which recount facts and figures with the rote efficiency of a Wikipedia summary, JOHN MCENROE: IN THE REALM OF PERFECTION concerns itself with the most relevant possible minutiae -- form, technique, and the way bodies move in ...Read more
Perhaps the best sports documentary I've ever seen. Unlike most, which recount facts and figures with the rote efficiency of a Wikipedia summary, JOHN MCENROE: IN THE REALM OF PERFECTION concerns itself with the most relevant possible minutiae -- form, technique, and the way bodies move in the physical world.
What begins as an essay about a series of annual instructional videos becomes a thesis about a man who found a way to merge his emotions and his effort into a singular unquantifiable weapon. Some days he could wield it with authority, and other days it detonated in his face. Normally I cringe when presented with a "perfectly emblematic" anecdote that too-easily summarizes a character, either real or imagined. But here, McEnroe's French Open meltdown isn't just the stuff of legend, it's the most salient possible cautionary tale about living on the edge of your senses.
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