Patron Pick – Federer: Twelve Final Days

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Matt Harris.

Federer: Twelve Final Days (2024)
Directed by Asif Kapadia and Joe Sabia

Once upon a time, I played tennis nearly every day. In the late 1990s, my family started frequenting the public tennis courts. Being homeschooled, solo sports were the easiest to play rather than team-based ones. I also watched a bit of tennis and knew the players at the time: Sampras, Agassi, Seles, Hingis, Kournikova, etc. Then I went to college, and other than taking tennis as a physical education prerequisite for my bachelor’s degree, I haven’t touched on the sport since. I had heard of Roger Federer; he was emerging as a top player when I stopped paying attention, but I couldn’t say I knew much about him. After watching this documentary about his retirement from the sport, I still can’t tell much about him.

Due to injuries and the accompanying surgeries, Roger Federer released a video on 15 September 2022 announcing his retirement from tennis. His media team hired Joe Sabia to make a documentary about the last twelve days of his career after Federer had done a Vogue shoot with the director years prior. Federer has said he never intended for this footage to be released to the public. It had been something made for his inner circle and family to have a record of the moment. However, the multi-championship-winning player decided to shape it into a film for public release, which is when Asif Kapadia came on board, adding thirty minutes of archive footage and player interviews. The result is a film that still seems to hold Federer at an arm’s distance from the audience.

I came into this film anticipating a retrospective of Federer’s career in a way that someone like me, who knows very little about him, would learn about his life. There’s a bit of that, but it skates on the surface, never allowing itself to go deeper. There’s so much hype behind his farewell message and his last tournament – on the European team for the Laver Cup. If I had already been a Federer fan, I would have been far more moved by this than I was. I wish the filmmakers had put more effort into making this more meaningful for those watching it without that background knowledge.

The best word to describe this documentary is “self-indulgent.” If Federer had been diagnosed with a severe illness, I could see the need for the gravitas on screen. But he’s not dying. He’s just retiring to continue being rich and having a big family. It’s clear some peers feel a lot of emotion over the idea of not facing Federer on the court in a big tournament again, but like you can call the guy. I am sure you are going to hang out. The number of tears on the screen felt utterly disproportionate to what was happening.

The way interviewees talk about Federer and how he talks about his own career reeks of self-obsession. He shared that when he told his family about his decision to leave professional tennis, all but one of his children cried. That was strange, almost calling out the kid for not being as emotional as Federer would have liked. I wanted to know more about him as a person – a professional athlete, husband, father, son, etc. but the movie just refuses to let us in. If we got closer to Federer, we might find someone not very fun to be around. His friendship with Rafael Nadal felt like the most authentic thing about the documentary’s subject.

There’s a moment when Federer’s agent talks to some official at the Laver Cup and says Federer keeps talking like he’s done, but they have plans for his post-tennis life. I assumed as much. I’d expect a book (ghostwritten, of course), a stint doing some commentary on television, and doing motivational speaking is probably a given. This causes the doc to feel like a public relations move, making sure people are thinking about Federer as he makes his next move. And wouldn’t you know it, the documentary was released just as his new book, Federer, was released. It’s a 335-page full of photographs from his career and life. He’s also promoting a new sunglasses line from Oliver Peoples, tennis wear from Uniqlo, and a shoe collection from On. So, is this a documentary about Federer retiring or a way to advertise he’s available for other projects?

In corporate hands, the documentary has gone far from its golden age in the 1960s and 70s. Having watched some of Frederick Wiseman’s work this year, I saw the form at its absolute best. Documentaries should illuminate their subjects in a manner that gives the audience a much better understanding by the time the end credits roll. Federer: Twelve Final Days is the antithesis of that. It is cold, calculated, and lacks the depth that makes docs captivating. About twenty minutes into this one, I could feel my attention waning, and I had to focus a lot to make it through. Do I know more about Roger Federer after watching it? I guess. I didn’t know how many people were in his family. But I don’t really understand who this guy is other than someone who was really good at tennis and is Swiss.