If it weren’t for the film’s title, it might take a while to realise that John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, the new feature-length documentary from director Julien Faraut, is about John McEnroe at all. It opens with black-and-white archive of a tanned Frenchman practising ground strokes – a clunky instructional video from the Sixties, it turns out – shot by France’s first national technical director of tennis, Gil de Kermadec. Ever in the quest of excellence, de Kermadec eventually turned his cameras on players in action at the Roland Garros tournament, to see how they really moved when they were on court. In the mid-Eighties, he found his ultimate subject in the form of the bandana-wearing, umpire-abusing, awe-inspiring American number one.
So the intro is all a preamble, essentially, to explain how Faraut came to be in possession of a bumper bounty of footage that makes up the majority of his film, and shows John McEnroe, in intense focus, doing what he did best: phenomenal shot variety, lightning-quick net approaches, late-reveal drop-shots. Also: curling his lip, eyeballing members of the press, and endless – really, endless – arguing with officials about line calls. “You speak English? Take your glasses off so you can see the ball, all right?” Truly, in case we’d forgotten, the man was a prince.
McEnroe, to be fair, was under considerable pressure at the time, given that he was on his own quest for excellence in 1984. He was in his fourth year as world number one, a 42-match winning streak, had won his first six events of the year, and was soon to play his first ever French Open final. But this, at least initially, and frustratingly, is not what Faraut is interested in or willing to explain.
At first, in fact, he seems to be taking on de Kermadec’s mantle – analysing McEnroe’s technical brilliance in a sultry voiceover delivered by actor Mathieu Almaric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). It can all get a bit deep and, well, French. Here’s film critic Serge Daney writing at the time and quoted in the film: “Björn Borg puts the ball in the spot where the other player is not. McEnroe puts it in a place the other player will never reach.” [Insert Gallic shrug here.]
Not that there’s not a place for philosophising and artistic pretension in sports docs. Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006) kept its cameras trained exclusively on Zizou for the duration of a La Liga match, to surprisingly stirring effect. (This film was itself a nod to Fußball wie noch nie, a German documentary from 1970 focused entirely on George Best in a game against Coventry City.) The Bafta-winning documentary Senna, the mesmerisingly immersive film about the life and death of Brazilian Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna, doubtless benefits from the Royal College of Art schooling received by its British director, Asif Kapadia (whose doc about Diego Maradona debuts in June – hold onto your hats!).
Actually, though you have to wait for it, John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection does deliver some emotional punch. Because, like Kapadia’s documentaries, it is made up of archive, no talking heads, it has some of the absorbing qualities of Senna; all the shots of McEnroe prowling up and down the red clay between points, absorbing the jeers from the crowd, thrashing his racquet in frustration, do make it feel at times like you’re watching a wounded bull snorting and pawing the sand.
And the film does have a thesis. In contrast to the playing style of today, where showing emotion is considered a sign of weakness (let’s not forget that perennial smoothichops Roger Federer was known for his temper as a young player), McEnroe’s strength, it argues, was in harnessing his sense of persecution – by the crowd, by the officials, by the system – and turning it into a unquenchable desire to win. As Serge Danay wrote, more coherently this time: “McEnroe only plays well if he feels that everyone is against him. Hostility is his drug.”
So you can bring that knowledge to the final third of the film, which does finally resort to the pre-ordained narrative arc of an actual tennis match – the 1984 French Open men’s final between McEnroe and Ivan Lendl (not that the film is going to anything as pedestrian and conventional as name-checking his opponent until they are several games in), at which McEnroe’s quest for perfection was destined to meet its happy or unhappy end.
If even that doesn’t grab you, there’s also the excellent era-specific clothing to enjoy. My boyfriend, watching the film next to me, seemed to experience a full-body spasm every time McEnroe appeared in another polyester Sergio Tacchini zip-up sweater (“FUCKING HELL I WOULD PAY A LOT OF MONEY FOR THAT TOP OH MY GOD,” etc). John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection won’t make it onto any best sports documentary lists any time soon, but if you’re a tennis fan, a cinéphile, or mid-Eighties sportswear enthusiast, you’ll find something to enjoy.
McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection is out now.
Miranda Collinge is the Deputy Editor of Esquire, overseeing editorial commissioning for the brand. With a background in arts and entertainment journalism, she also writes widely herself, on topics ranging from Instagram fish to psychedelic supper clubs, and has written numerous cover profiles for the magazine including Cillian Murphy, Rami Malek and Tom Hardy.
