THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER29, 2021 97
reads out the Thirty-second Psalm.)
Both films are too inward-turning, and
too sombrely shadowed, to count as
epics, despite the grandeur of their land-
scapes. Why, then, in terms of momen-
tum, should “East of Eden” be so much
the stronger? Perhaps because of Dean,
and the twisted, unslackening, near-
laughable grip of his presence; he doesn’t
seem to know what he’s going to do
next, and the suspense is contagious.
Though Cumberbatch, too, can be com-
pelling, and though you constantly won-
der what is stored in reserve behind his
wintry gaze, he is at heart a master of
urbanity, and not everyone will be con-
vinced that he’s truly at home on the
range. Still, you should certainly seek
out the movie, and relish its central
standoff: Rose, downstairs, stumbling
through an awkward tune on a piano,
versus Phil, plucking away on his banjo,
without mercy, in a room overhead. The
scene is as tense as the gunfight at the
O.K. Corral. Guess who wins.
T
here are helicopter parents, and
then there are tennis parents. Ten-
nis parents are more like the choppers
in “Apocalypse Now” (1979), overcom-
ing every little setback with the help of
napalm and Wagner. Even among ten-
nis parents, however, few have matched
the firepower of Richard Williams, the
father of Venus and Serena Williams.
He is now the hero of the modestly ti-
tled “King Richard,” a new film from
Reinaldo Marcus Green, which follows
Venus and Serena—played with robust
good humor, and stinging forehands,
by Saniyya Sidney and Demi Single-
ton, respectively—from girlhood to
the brink of stardom. Yet the movie
isn’t really about them. How come?
Because Richard is played by Will
Smith. It’s one of Smith’s all-consum-
ing performances. He’s often alone in
the frame, and, when other folks do
cluster around, he remains the hub of
dramatic attention. Hunching his shoul-
ders, lowering his head, and thrusting
out his jaw, Smith looks ever-primed
for the fray—startlingly so, because we
know how loose and gangly he can be.
He still gets plenty of laughs, but there’s
a militant edge to the comedy. Simple
shots of him, at the wheel of an old
camper van, show a soul no longer ca-
pable of repose. At night, Richard works
as a security guard, and carries a weapon;
by day, he favors tennis shorts and sneak-
ers. Either way, he’s like a soldier who
won’t get out of his uniform. The call
to action can come at any time.
Richard and his wife, Brandi (Aun-
janue Ellis), live in Compton with their
five daughters. I kept hoping to hear
the other three girls talk among them-
selves about Venus and Serena, but no
such scene occurs. (Any whisper of dis-
unity would be inimical to the purpose
of the film; solidarity is all.) The do-
mestic regime is stern, with obligatory
straight A’s at school. Tennis practice
continues even in a downpour—volleys
and smashes only, since the balls won’t
bounce. Now and then, Richard falls
foul of local thugs. “Daddy got beat up
again,” the girls report, with a sigh.
When cops and social services come by
to check on the family, Richard responds
by commanding his kids to spell the
word “civilization.” He declares, “We
got future doctors, and lawyers, plus a
couple of tennis stars in this house.” For
Venus and Serena, he has a particularplan. It runs to seventy-eight pages. He
wrote it before they were born.
The movie’s big reveal is withheld
until the end credits, in which Venus and
Serena Williams are named as executive
producers. So much for objectivity. Yet
audiences know when they’re being sold
something, and they would balk at “King
Richard” if it were merely a slab of pro-
motional P.R. As it is, when I saw the
film, with a big crowd, you could sense
people leaning into the story and feed-
ing off its verve. The atmosphere that is
brewed by Green and his director of pho-
tography, Robert Elswit, is a blend of the
aggressive and the benign. Nothing is
more welcoming or more sun-smoth-
ered, for example, than the Florida ten-
nis academy to which Venus and Serena
are invited by a leading coach, Rick Macci
( Jon Bernthal), with their sisters and
their parents in tow; no sooner do they
arrive, however, than Richard announces
that Venus will not be competing on the
junior circuit. She will bide her time and
then, at his behest, turn pro.
Is there madness in Richard’s method?
Unquestionably. Even if he began by
deliberately pushing two of his children
into a super-white sport, could he hon-
estly have foreseen that they would in-
deed conquer the field? Surely not. What
makes Green’s film so persuasive is that
other characters—above all, the redoubt-
able Brandi Williams—are alive to ev-
erything that’s absurd and overbearing,
as well as noble, in the hero’s cause. “You
are the most stubborn person I’ve met
in my life,” one guy says to Richard.
“And I coach McEnroe. ” NEWYORKER.COM
Richard Brody blogs about movies.THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2021 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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