John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection - Documentary

Started by wilder, September 20, 2018, 05:55:16 PM

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wilder



JOHN MCENROE: IN THE REALM OF PERFECTION 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 at Paris's Roland Garros Stadium 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
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Written and directed by Julien Faraut
Release Date - August 25, 2018

wilberfan

Saw this opening day.  The first third was rather interesting, as he approaches the subject from a different angle than typically taken in a conventional documentary.   Ultimately I ended up a bit disengaged in the last half of the film, and ended up searching out a much more interesting (to me, at least) telling of the Mac and Bjorn dynamics told by the two principals themselves via YouTube