We are in ranching country, though where we are, at any given moment, isn’t always clear; it takes a while to get one’s bearings, economic as much as geographical.
We learn that he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, yet refinement of any sort disgusts him; when the governor of the state comes to dine, George requests that Phil clean himself up beforehand.
On a prosaic level, I never quite believed in George and Phil as brothers, and the movie’s closeups tend to belabor a symbolic point: artificial flowers, crafted from cut paper; a hand caressing the curves of a well-buffed saddle; a bull calf being castrated.
The pivot of the plot is Rose Gordon ; as thin as a sapling, and flitting to and fro in white shoes, he is the one who makes the flowers.
Rose, humiliated by Phil, and socially out of her depth, takes to drink, her features increasingly ruddied by liquor and tears.
Why, then, in terms of momentum, 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.
Even among tennis 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 titled “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 Singleton, respectively—from girlhood to the brink of stardom.
Hunching his shoulders, 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.
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 particular plan.
Nothing is more welcoming or more sun-smothered, for example, than the Florida tennis academy to which Venus and Serena are invited by a leading coach, Rick Macci , 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.
What makes Green’s film so persuasive is that other characters—above all, the redoubtable Brandi Williams—are alive to everything that’s absurd and overbearing, as well as noble, in the hero’s cause.
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