John Mcenroe, only played well if he felt that everyone was against him

"Only one thing moved him: the eternal injustice of which he was necessarily the victim. He only played well if he felt that everyone was against him. Hostility was his drug." The one referred to in this phrase more typical of George RR Martin is not the King of the Night. Not even Cersei Lannister. This is someone with a much more delicate and unpredictable setback: John McEnroe . The film critic who was editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinema , Serge Daney, thus refers to the American tennis player in the extravagant and great documentary Looking for perfection signed by Julien Faraut. The film, which opens this Friday, is, as its protagonist, unpredictable. In fact, it is much easier to define it for everything that it is not, than on the contrary. It is not a sports documentary to use. He deals with the brightest tennis player of all time , but it hardly works as an excuse to go beyond his rage and fury itself. Nor is it a prolongation of the effective although somewhat clumsy tape released last season directed by Janus Metz Pedersen and that attended the explicit name of Borg McEnroe. Yes, the argument is tennis, but what matters is something else. More violent.

"The cinema for me is the reverberation of sound, the sensation of time ... the countdown, the fatality ... what are our chances of inventing time? The essence of the best cinema is the invention of time." Again, Serge Daney takes the floor and this is how he faces the moving image with tennis. In his opinion, the two arts have the privilege of controlling and giving birth at the same time . As is.

Let's say that on this last precept, Faraut plays to rebuild a world, a world by ancient force and probably already forgotten. It all starts before even the 80's. Then, the filmmaker and sports scholar Gil de Kermadec dedicated his time and effort to do something like educational films about the right way to take the racket, put your feet, move on the sand ... At that point and document to the millimeter the passage by Roland Garros of players like John McEnroe. In his studies, among other things, he is right to see precisely the unique characteristics of an irrefutable serve that throws the body "like a whip against the ball". That and the unique ability to hide the meaning of the game until the last second. All that McEnroe does.

That material remained hidden, or just asleep, in the very French Institut National du Sport et de l'Education Physique until one day Julien Farault found it. At that time, and under the Godardian premise "Cinema lies, sport does not" , everything changed. In the hands of the director, McEnroe becomes an obsession. Or better, the sickly obsession of the most obsessive of tennis players ends up becoming a recurrent, precise and, of course, obsessive, account of the only possible obsession. McEnroe gets angry because the chair judge refuses to agree. McEnroe is enraged because the rumor of the 16 mm camera is too high (or too low). McEnroe seems to lose his temper because the mark of the ball looks too much. Or it doesn't look at all. McEnroe acts as McEnroe in every second and it is his rage, he keeps the movie, which feeds his game.

A psychologist tries to explain the inexplicable. Any other player is unable to regain balance after one of his tantrums. He, on the contrary, stands firm. It would be said that he even needs them. At one point, the film recovers some images of Robert de Niro in Toro Savage and, suddenly, everything comes in, if not felt, yes a little lyricism. It was that. At another moment, Seeking perfection, he entertains himself in narrating how the protagonist of Amadeus , the 1985 Milos Forman film, used his model to compose Mozart's character. Tom Hulce and McEnroe, poisoned by the always irascible whim of genius .

The film advances between miraculous images of which television is no longer capable with its transparent retransmissions from a thousand points of view. And always with the camera stopped in a single player, the only possible player. It would be said, as Faraut himself warns, that McEnroe's opponent is only McEnroe himself .

And so on until reaching the final moment. The year 1984 was his year. Maybe it was just the year of tennis. McEnroe was one step away from his goal: perfection . With a ranking of victories above 95% he reached the final of the clay tournament against the greatest specialist, Ivan Lendl. The last quarter of the movie is the scheduled and miraculous broadcast of that game. Nothing else. And yet, what matters, it has already been said, is not so much tennis as time itself.

McEnroe acts as McEnroe from the first serve, from the first sigh. Fight, get angry and win. And again. Each sequence is narrated, like the whole movie, by the surround voice of actor Mathieu Amalric. And the film, little by little, remains in a state of ecstatic suspension near the miracle. Suddenly, the absurd norms of tennis acquire the forcefulness of a sacred maxim and McEnroe becomes a timeless hero who claims noise and fury for himself . The public booes him. "Hostility is your drug." Until, against the logic of time, cinema and tennis, he loses. And cries. And he is enraged. Only John McEnroe.

The reckless adventure of a genius

Javier Martinez

Guided by a transgressive desire, without giving up an iota to the essence of his game, John McEnroe was very close to achieving the chimera of winning Roland Garros , in 1984. In a tournament historically patrimonized by the players with residence at the bottom of the court , the left-hander demonstrated in the first two sets how, at least then, one could fight for the greatest achievement on a dirt court with arguments of fast surfaces. And it could be done, in addition, before an opponent that agglutinated all the requirements demanded in the clay. Rarely in the professional era has a confrontation of opposing styles been seen in such a radical way. Forget the Nadal-Federer.

McEnroe, who had already won three of his four titles at the US Open and two of his three cups at Wimbledon , was the absolute reverse of Lendl. Faced with the granitic proposal of the Ostrava player, it offered improvisation and risk, backed by a surgical touch volley. No one has returned to play in Paris with that degree of audacity and recklessness. Too bad the tennis was stubborn and inclement.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• culture
• movie theater
• Cineseries
• Cinema and Series
• Films
• tennis

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