Since its theatrical release in April I have seen Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers six times. Technically I’ve only seen it five times in theaters, I had to pirate one time because I really needed it as motivation to do my hair. But that only sends home the message that Guadagnino’s tennis drama is ‘like food and drink to me’ (a Paul Thomas Anderson-ism). I listen to the soundtrack while I create shooting schedules. I read the script in my free time. Whether it compels me to the theater or to Amazon when the BluRay drops, I am consuming Challengers. To say what exactly it is about Challengers would be doing it a disservice.
But if I really had to list some of what I love about it I could maybe say it’s that the narrative centers around the pursuit of a black woman, that none of the characters do the right thing but that doesn’t mean they’re doing the wrong thing, the over the top cinematography, the score holding all the subtext on its back, Mike Faist with curly blonde hair… and then I just go on forever and it gets less eloquent. I’ve really wanted to write about Challengers since I saw it for the fourth time but I really didn’t have the language to put it into words. When I’ve been asked about my obsession I’ve just been saying, “they put drugs in that movie” and that pretty much explains why I have to go.
In between rewatches I have been returning to the classics. Before coming to film school I hadn’t seen a single movie made before 1980 except for The Godfather part one and two. I was deeply ashamed about attending one of the best film schools in the world and not having even seen a Scorsese film. So that summer I studied and when I got to school in September I studied too. I spent four years of film school watching as many classics as I could, picking up from my professors to treat the 70s and the auteurs of the golden age like rockstars. Everything was better in the 70s where art was free. Billy Crystal, who spoke at my graduation, said rent was $88 a month. My professors would tell me they’d smoke weed in their administrators offices’ with them. They’d shoot film for pennies and crank a projector in front of their whole class. I left school believing that art sucks now and no matter how far Chazelle and Gerwig went they would never compare to the greats. So I went to the IFC to watch Woman Under the Influence. One of my early directing teachers called it ‘the best depiction of mental illness on film’. At the time the IFC was also playing The Beast, a modern french movie that had some buzz after its Venice International Film Festival premiere. I wanted to see The Beast because it had George MacKay and Léa Seydoux and looked interesting, but I ultimately chose the former. Cassavetes was a name I’d heard in film school and I didn’t want to be at an Oscars afterparty in 20 years engaged in conversation with an old head and not have a favorite Cassavetes film to discuss. So I went. It was fine. It definitely wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t remarkable. It wasn’t the ‘best depiction of mental illness’ I’d ever seen. I didn’t really have much to say about it after I saw it and I still don’t.
Last week I went to the Museum of Moving Image. I had been meaning to go again for months. I have a shirt from them, a water bottle, I celebrated my 20th birthday there, but I hadn’t been because I had found most of their programming boring as of late. Finally I saw Michael Mann’s Last of the Mohicans screening on a Friday night. So I took my ass to Queens and ran through the rain to watch the 1992 epic. And it was okay. It was epic, definitely, but I didn’t have much to say again. Thinking about it now I can say I was kind of annoyed with the chick Daniel Day Lewis ended up with because she was such an ignorant bonehead but ultimately she faded into the background of the story and it wasn’t worth bringing up. As I walked to Queensborough Plaza I started to wonder if I had glamorized an entirely normal and even underwhelming era. Of course the 70s was when Francis Ford Copolla was coming out with back to back bangers and Martin Scorsese was hitting his prime and Dennis Hopper was hot but in between that, what else? Maybe an entire decade can’t be defined by a couple 90 minute moments and I had hated modernity just because the year was 2024.
But then again, I haven’t only been watching classics, I watched Babes and Inside Out 2, 2024 releases I felt similarly lukewarm about. I had seen Babes with one of my best friends where we caught up lazily in Cooper Triangle and thought we’d be the only ones in the theater so we laughed and whisper screamed through the trailers. After, we discussed the artistic repercussions of Martin Scorsese’s Chanel ad playing before the movie and after the trailers and walked 50 blocks home. On that walk I found a really cool and very free nightstand for my new apartment.
I watched Inside Out 2 the next day with my friend. We stood on 42nd street for a while before going in. I was struck by the backdrop of our intimate conversation, despite a smog filled sky and the loudest traffic imaginable we were still connecting. Though I didn’t have the highest opinion of the movies themselves, the experience made those seemingly mundane days unforgettable.
Now Challengers. It couldn’t have been made any year earlier than the one we’re in. Shot on film and a VFX marvel. A black woman in a leading role being desired. The erotica transcending the traditional understanding of sexuality. The sheer Italianness of it all. The 70s didn’t have space for this cinematic experience, and this is what is currently inspiring me. It dawned on me that the glory days are now. Hitting fruit and cereal flavored vapes. Telling a story in seven seconds. Putting your feet up at the commercial theater at 10pm and showing up at the club at 1am. This is what it feels like to be an artist now. What Woman Under the Influence was to my professors is what Challengers is to me. It’s the mark of a new era of filmmaking and art. Where I am young and I get to be uninhibited under the new freedoms of modern society. I am who old heads used to be, young and dumb and in my 20s. The 2020s is the new 1970s.