In so many important ways the documentary film “Citizen Ashe” delivers the perfect cinematic drop shot.
The revealing portrait of the late tennis legend, three-time Grand Slam champion Arthur Ashe provides new details about his life off-court, compelling background on his rise through the tennis ranks.
It delivers a message about our humanity that is as important today as it was decades ago when Ashe was navigating the sport’s highest echelon as a Black man of humble upbringing competing in a predominantly white, country club world.
Although director Rex Miller started working on this movie five years ago, its timing and message couldn’t have aligned any better for its upcoming release.
The effort is already getting a lot of Oscar buzz as it headlines major documentary film festivals and earns praise in advance of the film’s theater opening Dec. 3 in New York and eventually stream on HBO Max.
“Citizen Ashe” directors Miller and Sam Pollard were able to use dozens of reels of never-before seen archival film from a TIME Magazine shoot with Ashe in the late 1960s.
Interviews with Ashe, his younger brother Johnnie, his wife Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe and tennis contemporaries like Billie Jean King and John McEnroe are intersected with amazing video and revealing information of Ashe’s unlikely tennis start at his Richmond, Va. hometown city courts culminating with his worldwide acclaim at Wimbledon and the US Open.
It delivers intriguing revelations about Ashe’s life – some new even for tennis aficionados. From his humble upbringings – raised by a single father after his mother passed away when Ashe was only six years old at the time – to his earliest days on the tennis courts, so often the only Black player in tournaments.
It examines his time as a freshman at UCLA and then as an Army officer working at West Point – all as he continued to advance in the tennis world. In fact, he became the first Black player to win the U.S. Open in 1968 and did so while also serving as an Army lieutenant.
The film also showed the incredible family support Ashe enjoyed; how his brave younger brother Johnnie offered to serve a second tour in Vietnam so that Ashe could stay home and pursue his tennis career – the United States military after World War II, had a policy to avoid sending brothers off to Vietnam together.
“Now is a very pressing moment to have a film about Arthur Ashe with all the racial issues that are being exposed and Black Lives Matter and George Floyd’s murder, and you know 60 years after Emmitt Till’s murder, which influenced Arthur so much,’’ Miller told OSDB Sports.
“Arthur becomes someone to really have a look at his life and not only was he a great tennis champion and he was a great social activist, but he was a unique kind of social activist, especially for the time, in that he could span both sides of the table, so to speak.
“He was the Black man in the all-White tennis world who wasn’t radical enough for some people, but he did things his way and most importantly, he used his voice. As he said to himself, ‘Arthur, you can’t sit and just let the world go by. You have to say something, you have to do something.’
“So, I think that’s a very important message and for me, it’s one of the big takeaways about Arthur’s life.’’
Navigating his career was complicated by competing pressures – both internal and external - the vastly different treatment he received from White players and fans – who predominantly made up the professional tennis circuit at that time – and Blacks, who often challenged Ashe’s approach to backing the Civil Rights movement.
The film takes a particularly close look at the difference between boxing legend Muhammad Ali and Ashe as they stood out and stood up during the intense Civil Rights struggles of their time.
Ali was in-your-face contempt and bravado while Ashe used a more measured, behind-the-scene style. But they both were passionate despite their differing approaches.
Tennis and the opportunities it provided became Ashe’s vehicle for change.
“The other thing too that I think is important to recognize about this film, is here is a film being made about another phenomenal African-American athlete, but he came to his activism in a different way than Muhammad Ali,’’ Pollard said.
“He wasn’t the guy that was going to break the walls down. He wasn’t going to be screaming from the top of the mountain. But he wanted to also make his point and make it in a way that says, ‘I want to bring people to the table. I want to have debates and discussions about what is going on in America, about what’s going on in South Africa.’
“He knew for him to be able to have that platform he had to establish himself as an athlete in the white world of tennis, which he did. And by winning the US Open in 1968 as he says to his brother, after he won the U.S. Open, now he has a platform, now he could speak out. But he was going to speak out in the Arthur Ashe way.”
“It’s the funny thing about films, sometimes you start a start a film in a certain period and all of a sudden, as you get close to the finish of the film certain things happen in the zeitgeist of the world of American History and you say, ‘wow, this film is really going to come out at the right time,’’ Pollard continued.
“So, five years ago, not that racism wasn’t here – it existed – but now we’re living in a period that in many ways is reminiscent of what Arthur was going through in 1968, where America is coming to terms with this reckoning about systemic racism in this country and what does it mean, how does it impact both White and Black Americans. So, it just feels like this is the opportune time for this film to come out and be shown.
The intensity of Ashe’s reality – his struggle to succeed in the tennis world, to be a voice for the Civil Rights movement and ultimately to be a voice for those affected by AIDS in the earliest public times of the disease – is both moving and inspiring. A reminder how great talent and great motivation can literally change the world. Ashe does that.
His presence and talent forced the sport of tennis to evolve. His passion for Civil Rights helped force our country to evolve. And his public battle with AIDs pushed the progress of both the medical world and opened the hearts of society in general.
Most appropriately, the film ends with Ashe’s widow Jeanne – an amazing photographer, supportive wife and willing legacy for Ashe’s great work.
The final scenes of the movie show Jeanne in the couple’s vast library. She looks into a book and reads an inscription from Ashe. “We want to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed,’’ it says.
“I grew up in the 60s and I was aware of Arthur Ashe but I wasn’t aware to the degree you learn about in this film,’’ Pollard said. “I wasn’t aware of his activism in South Africa, his dealing with heart disease and helping others deal with heart disease, his humanitarian efforts in other areas, his dealing with AIDs after he got the diagnosis.
“To me, this shows me, ‘wow, I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.’ I used to see Arthur Ashe as a clean-cut guy who wore glasses like me, clean-shaven good tennis player. That’s all I thought. But now I’ve learned more. And that’s what’s always great about the documentary, is that I always find a documentary a way to learn things that you never knew. It becomes one of those wonderful explorations where you say, ‘wow, I didn’t know that. I’ve just learned something.’
“That’s why, as a documentarian for over 40 years that’s why I still loved him so much. You always learn something new about something you thought you knew everything about.’’
As Jeannie so poignantly says in the closing moments of this film, “Those kind of people are treasures and when you lose them, you realize what a real treasure is.’’
