If you showed someone tennis for the first time and then asked them to explain the sport, the observational description would be very apt. At face value, it involves a ball being hit back and forth over a net. On the surface, most sports can be reduced to something rather trivial. But there’s obviously much more to be derived by fans of the sport, whatever sport it may be. As a disclaimer, this piece will not spoil any plot revelations in regard to Challengers but will discuss certain cinematic techniques and how they are used in the film to elicit audience reactions and emotions.
Luca Gudagnino’s Challengers revolves around tennis, a sport that doesn’t often get the cinematic treatment. Some recent examples are Battle of the Sexes, King Richard, and the particularly wonderful 7 Days In Hell. So, how does one get audiences enveloped in a world that keeps many at a distance? Obviously, it helps to have three of the most exciting actors working today. But Guadagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom also inject a wildly stylized energy into this film. However, it’s not utilized in a basic fashion. On the contrary, Challengers’ cinematography often elevates the film’s tone and forces the viewer to truly grapple with framing. It might seem on the surface that these are two very basic components of cinematography, but the way it is used here contains more complexity.
Obviously, we are meant to reach certain conclusions and emotions based on the imagery we see and how it appears to us in the film. But we seem to be in a time when the very fundamentals of cinema are questioned or even balked at. The mere idea of criticizing basic lighting techniques or asking for more than simple shot/reverse-shot dialogue is met with hostility. Every scene, no matter how mundane it may appear, can be beautiful—that’s an idea no longer shared by many. So it feels refreshing to see a film so daringly utilize point-of-view framing to bring the viewer directly into the characters’ minds. Dialogue scenes from films this decade have arguably never been as exciting or jumped off the screen more.
Often, at least in the case of bigger-budget films, it appears the camera is merely pointed at the subject. Pre-visualization, also known as pre-vis, is also heavily utilized. It’s a technology essentially utilized by studios and filmmakers as a more three-dimensional way of storyboarding. A team can show up to any given shoot where pre-vis has been used, and a computer can visualize where the camera should be placed and what it will roughly look like in any given space, and it can render any upcoming CGI. It’s a tool that can be utilized particularly well, but oftentimes, certain big-budget blockbusters appear to use it more lazily. So in a world where pre-vis rules and both performers and directors might not know where exactly a particular scene takes place, it doesn’t allow much room to explore a given space.
With Challengers, Mukdeeprom doesn’t have that problem. There’s no idea too visually grand for this film. Spaces are envisioned to the maximum potential and capitalized upon. It all culminates in a sequence that is marvelous and bold. But Challengers takes its time building to its visual crescendo. And that isn’t to say that the rest of the film isn’t aesthetically exciting. The ways in which Mukdeeprom slowly sets the stage for his bombastic finale is quite brilliant. It’s the perfect example of repeatedly using certain techniques, such as whacking tennis balls directly at the camera, over the course of the film. By the end, when he begins unleashing cinematic mayhem, the audience is honed into the style he’s using.
Challengers isn’t interested in merely capturing the actions of its lead trio, as much as it wants to force us into their minds. And these are messy individuals. Isn’t that where the most compelling cinema lies, though? In the boundaries between right and wrong? Justin Kuritzkes’ screenplay clearly understands that and Guadagnino and Mukdeeprom seem to feed off the palpable volleys in which each character finds themselves entangled. Every inch of Challengers simmers with tension, and the ways in which it visually approaches this tension is fascinating.
For example, a particularly steamy conversation between Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist) takes place in a sauna. Aside from the tantalizing framing, Mukdeeprom chooses to capture both barely-clothed men. The way he captures the two individually highlights the internalized idea of their power dynamics regarding one another. Patrick makes a rather ominous statement rather than cut immediately to Art’s reaction. We witness a moment of play within Patrick’s memory before then being treated with an even greater close-up. Only then do we see Art’s reaction. This is one of the many times Mukdeeprom inadvertently tricks us into accepting a first-person point-of-view shot without any gimmick to reveal it as such. The same is then done from the reverse effect. We, as the viewer, through Mukdeeprom’s lens, begin scowling at each character from the perspective of their scene partner. It makes objectivity and impartiality impossible. Instead, it draws us into the world of Challengers— a world that is continuously collapsing in on itself— and the characters that inhabit it. And this collapse occurs not with a whimper but with a bang. Mukdeeprom’s use of this first-person POV only makes the more blatant use of it later on all the more exciting. It reveals the beauty of Challengers’ visuals. Whether subtle or screaming in your face, cinema has a place for all of it. By the end of the film, we’re immersed in the characters’ high-octane world of tennis. Under the court, in the tennis ball, directly behind their eyes. What I can only describe as a dual split-diopter catapults itself onto the screen, and any sense of standard cinematic storytelling is thrown out the window. By ways both abstract and built upon, Challengers heralds the arrival of its new form with such tenacity and vigor that you can’t help but want to applaud and shout in your seat. And that’s what the movies are all about. Or is that what tennis is all about?
