Federer: Twelve Final Days misses the interesting part of a legend’s goodbye
LOOKING BACK: Roger Federer attends Federer: Twelve Final Days at the Odeon Luxe, Leicester Square, London. Pic: Ian West, PA Wire
When is a goodbye at its most interesting? Is it the hugs? The tears? The resolution after as everyone gradually moves on?
A new Roger Federer documentary about his final twelve days suffers because it fails to realise the answer is none of the above.
Academy Award-winning director Asif Kapadia and director Joe Sabia came together to produce this new feature-length film chronicling the final 12 days of Federer’s professional tennis career.
Kapadia’s prior work on Senna and Maradona makes him a master in this realm. Unfortunately, this documentary rolls at the wrong time.
The great story is what came in the days, weeks and months before that video dropped on the Swiss legend’s social media channels announcing he was retiring at the age of 41.
“Tennis has treated me more generously than I ever would have dreamt, and now I must recognize when it is time to end my competitive career,” he told the camera.
Federer couldn’t exactly opt for an Irish goodbye, but he was keen to avoid a prolonged misty-eyed farewell tour with endless emotional tributes, otherwise known as the Brian O’Driscoll goodbye. It starts with a prolonged account of the PR machine in action.
They plan and organise all the logistics that come with a retirement announcement and ends with the Laver Cup in London. His two life partners are by his side for that touching conclusion, wife Mirka and rival Rafael Nadal.
Throughout there are brief flashbacks to a storied legacy; the 20 grand slams, slow-mo of masterly cannon serves or that saintly skip float towards the net. Inputs like his regimented rehab process and careful racket management also feature.
His breakdown of the physical contact that comes in a sport that allows no physical contact, transferred solely through the ball, is fascinating.
The problem is that much of that interest is in the B-Roll. The spaces between the film’s substance.
The most notable element of Netflix’s Break Point docuseries was how mundane the life of a professional tennis player is.
This film captures the tedious daily existence of a pro and everything he must endure as he steps away.
Notifying friends and family, fielding calls from the likes of Anna Wintour, perpetual media duties with questions such as, “true or false. If Nadal was a right-handed, you would have won more Grand Slams?”
Interesting to a point, but far from revolutionary. It makes the glimpses of true access all the more frustrating.
“Novak, I told him things that were very personal, that maybe triggered something with him as well,” Federer explains of that poignant scene after his last doubles match when he stood on the court with Andy Murray and the rest of The Big Three.
Murray asks on camera how he is holding up: “We will talk later.”
Charting every stage of this extraordinary career is a near-impossible task. The only realistic proposition was to take a chapter. No one is bigger than tennis yet as John McEnroe suggests in one scene, Federer comes close.
Not sorely because of that stretch of era-defining dominance, a wonder in full-flight who encapsulated theatre and art and the leisure at the heart of our inherent attraction to games.
It is the fact that for so long it felt never-ending.
Brilliance endured even while he slipped down the world rankings degree by degree. In each phase, he embraced change rather than clinging on. From a young hothead to a gracious genius. The decline stayed sensational.
Consider this: 1998 was Federer’s debut. In the next seven years he won 33 titles. The subsequent seven or ‘peak’ yielded 43.
In the next seven years up until his last title in 2019, Federer won 27. The injury that was ultimately given as the reason for his retirement hindered the last two seasons where he played in just six tournaments.
So, it had to end. The ticking clock really does account for us all. Athletes in every single sport have and will deal with that. Even the greats. That is when a goodbye is at its most compelling. The moments before the final moment. All of the time spent musing over whether time really is up.
Federer does touch on this when discussing his parents watching him play at Wimbledon knowing that he can’t win.
He later realised his wife was also wrestling with that reality. We never quite learn how he felt about it.
“I know it is better to stop,” he said after detailing the long list of issues with his knee.
“It is only afterwards where I realised how much Mirka has been suffering. I don’t remember her begging me to stop but she was asking the question, why are we still doing this?
“I know for her sitting there, she really didn’t like it anymore. She could feel I was not going to be the best anymore.”
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