I’m probably of the minority of viewers here in that I gave this film ★★★★ on Letterboxd, but you know what? I’m riding this decision to the end. King Richard is an emotional roller-coaster, and though it feels at times like another Forrest Gump or something of that ilk — films that work around your emotional experiences to something hard and uncertain to ultimately top tier success — it’s without a doubt a film that captivated me.
I wasn’t actually aware of Venus and Serena’s origins to Compton. I think there is somewhat of a call-out to this film in that your assumptions of people that play tennis or that rise to any level of success is that they were brought up in privilege. Hey, guess what, audience? That wasn’t what bred two of the top tennis players of all time. It was a dedicated father and parents that did anything but give up on their children. It was a family that held each other together.
I was thinking as the film progressed about what the choice was around making the film about Richard rather than about Venus. And I would have loved to see where Serena shines growing up, being the one who would top the charts for all time.
I do believe that ultimately the film is saying Richard paved this way for them, trained them and didn’t give up hope on them. As a major psychology geek, especially child psychology, this is a trend you notice with almost everyone that reaches high ranks of fame. The parents have to be involved, they have to sacrifice their time and energy to following the children’s futures, to making the most fair decisions for them still guided by this understanding that their child’s feelings of protection, self perception and willingness to succeed was going to be the thing that brought them there. We do see evidence of this, but we rarely see the children speaking their own minds or telling us their own truth in much detail. A lot of the film is showing us through plot or action or through what Richard does for them.
Something else we don’t see too much of is the impact of racism on what potentially kept them out of certain settings. I feel like Richard was conscious of the chance that the girls growing up around opulence, success, and also whiteness would damage their chance at being “the best.” This was, after all, the whole point to all of this. Perhaps why we don’t see (beyond one scene) the way racialized sexism impacted them is because Richard protected them from it, but I would have liked to know where the barriers were that weren’t included in the film.
Suggested for fans of cheesy success stories, but with the knowledge that sometimes cheesy success stories involve getting out of the fucking hood.
