Battle of the Sexes (2017)

Film: Battle of the Sexes (2017)
Stars: Emma Stone, Steve Carell, Andrea Riseborough, Sarah Silverman, Bill Pullman, Alan Cumming, Elisabeth Shue, Austin Stowell
Director: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I try really hard not to be a genre snob, as I honestly think that every single type of film has the potential for greatness.  People who rule out westerns or war films or romantic-comedies or superhero pictures-they're just limiting what they might experience at the movies, and I think that's a terrible way to treat a love of the cinema.  That being said, few types of movies give me allergies more than sports pictures.  Generally, there is only one type of sports movie (uplifting, come-from-behind, eventually either win or get a moral win), and the formula is so oft-repeated that I get bored really easily.  Pretty much all sports films fall into the shadow of Rocky at this point, which isn't the worst thing in the world (the original Rocky being a good movie), but it doesn't leave them room to breathe. When people ask me my favorite sports pictures, I almost always say Raging Bull or (more recently, depending on my mood) Everybody Wants Some!!! or if I'm feeling particularly cheeky, On the Waterfront.  None of these movies actually have sports as the central theme to their greatness, which is why it feels like a cheat as an answer.  Raging Bull is more about man's own struggle against himself, the fights he loses with himself (On the Waterfront is even more so about this, and is really just about an athlete in a situation that has little to do with athletics), and Everybody Wants Some!!! the baseball is almost completely incidental (they never even play an actual game against another team in the movie), as it's about growing up.  So color me surprised yesterday when I caught Battle of the Sexes, and those preconceptions I have about sports films got shattered; here is the rare come-from-behind movie that genuinely feels fresh and new, and not just a retread of what came before it.  That it's a true story and achieves that is a truly grand achievement.

(Real Life Doesn't Have Spoiler Alerts...though with Trump in charge, I kind of wish it did) The movie focuses on the peak of Billie Jean King's career (Stone), when she was fresh off of four consecutive wins at Wimbledon, was armed with the Grand Slam, and was world number one, and yet was still not being given her due in professional sports.  The film opens with King demanding that Jack Kramer (Pullman) pay the women the same for an upcoming tournament as what the male players are making (a debate that's sadly still talked about in the sport).  Kramer turns her down, and so King, along with eight other major players at the time (though admittedly none as important to the sport as King), start their own tour, playing in the "Virginia Slims Series" organized by King's friend Gladys (Silverman).  All the while, King is struggling with her own sexuality, balancing her deep platonic love for her husband Larry (Stowell) and her burgeoning sexual desire for a hairdresser she meets named Marilyn (Riseborough).  The movie lobs (pun intended) between King's story and that of former tennis great Bobby Riggs (Carell), who is struggling in his marriage and with his gambling addiction, and consistently is upset about women taking over a sport he used to dominate, and perhaps more so just mad the world has forgotten about him.  He decides to challenge King to a match, and when she refuses he plays Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee), the World #1 who bests a distracted Billie Jean King, beats her, forcing Billie Jean King to go out and beat Riggs to essentially save women's tennis from becoming a laughingstock.

If you follow this blog very closely, you'll know that I don't love a lot of athletics, but do have an undying love for tennis, so there's a part of me watching this movie that is waiting on the edge of my seat to see which superstars from the era will show up, who will play them, feeling the thrill others do when they hear names of superstars mentioned on the screen.  I've always been surprised that tennis hasn't given us more stories on the big-screen, since like boxing (film's favorite athletic competition), it's a strength-of-will, about one person versus one other person, and dominated by unlikely stories of people who rise to the top of their field (and unlike boxing, it doesn't glorify a sport that causes permanent brain damage).  Yet for some reason it's never really resonated at the movies in the same way, so part of me was just thrilled to see my heroes on the big-screen here, particularly one of my favorite athletes of all time, Billie Jean King.

But bias isn't what makes this movie great-it's anchored by a wonderful performance by Emma Stone at its center, which keeps the movie shifting forward even when it can't quite pick its mood (alternating between serious sports drama and occasionally languid 70's music-laden montages that feel out-of-place and a cheap ploy on the audience).  Stone is an actor I've struggled with my admiration for in the past.  After her grand breakthrough in Easy A, she has impressed me fully as a celebrity and clearly shown movie star potential, but even in her Oscar-nominated performances I haven't been wowed, but here she delivers.  By far her best work since Easy A, she grounds a difficult character to play onscreen with charisma and introversion.  Billie Jean King is not a tragic figure of sports, she's in fact someone who succeeded over-and-over again and is not someone who was plagued by drugs or alcohol or a ruinous marriage (she's famously good friends with her now ex-husband Larry).  Stone doesn't rely upon easy sports cliches to portray King, and even when she's struggling, it's in a way that feels unique to the character, and not just cribbed from every other athletic movie.  Look at the way that she can shift into performance mode, and the way she handles both her lesbianism and the fact that so much of the success of the sport she loves, at a critical time for women, rests on her ability to succeed.  It's a grand combination of solid acting and movie star magic, and Stone achieves it as an actress who has matured into her natural gifts.  Combined with supporting players who were very solid (Stowell and Silverman being the standouts), the movie is elevated by her work.

It's also a movie that's easy to root for, and Faris/Dayton don't shy away from the obvious correlations between the 2016 election and this battle.  After all, a strong, competent, at-the-top-of-her-game woman is constantly challenged by men she would dominate, particularly a blustering old fool who treats women like garbage and is intent on putting the best players in the world in their place.  There's a scene where Riggs, gleeful after besting Margaret Court in a rout, talks about wanting to take on Chris Evert next-if you look beyond Carell's colorful crowing, you can see the nastiness in this man wanting to take down these women, arguably the three best players in the world at the time, and show that "a man, any man, is better."  That doesn't, based on some conversations that King and others who knew Riggs, seem that genuine-Riggs was more of a ham, and someone simply craving money & publicity, but it does go to how men like Jack Kramer, and men like, say Donald Trump, clearly feel about women.  Stone's Billie Jean points this out late in the film when she refuses to let Jack Kramer announce the game-Riggs' sexism is for show, an act, she says, while Kramer's is for real (the latter being true, I'd argue, for Donald Trump and numerous other male commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who constantly feel the need to put women in their place).  The filmmakers have done a really strong job on the press tour pointing out that they anticipated that they'd be releasing this in a very different environment, anticipating a political sequel of sorts in 2016 rather than a Court/Riggs style matchup instead, but it perhaps makes the movie itself that much more urgent-this still happens today, we still marginalize women who try to invade a "man's world" in the same way.  It just got a little bit harder for the men when Billie Jean King kicked Bobby Riggs' ass.

There's so much more I could talk about here, as my inner tennis nerd surely got a workout with this picture (I especially was fascinated by the way they treated Margaret Court, a true legend of tennis but one who has been overshadowed by her deeply controversial statements in recent years about LGBT people, showing her as a side villain that nonetheless King was still rooting to best Riggs for the good of women everywhere), but I'll turn it over to the comments.  What were your thoughts on Battle of the Sexes?  Do you think Emma Stone can grab a third Oscar nomination for her work here? Share your thoughts in the comments!