The camera zooms into a scene we’ve all seen before: two tennis players rushing across the court with laser-like focus, each one attempting to defeat the other. The camera pushes in closer to the face of a woman following not the ball, but the players themselves.
We see past the sport itself and see the lives and passions of athletes. Their entire livelihoods revolve around their physical health and comparing themselves to the abilities of others like them. In a single moment, their careers could end, but that’s not where the fear ends.
“Challengers” follows three promising tennis players, all with ambitions and dreams of dedicating their lives to playing the game, but all find themselves on different life paths. Failure, success, pain and passion follow them and those around them.
If we zoom out of this scene, out of this screen, we see ourselves, whether we’re athletes, artists, students or simply humans. We find ourselves struggling with our futures, our relationships, what path we want to choose in our life and what happens when things don’t go according to plan. This movie is a beautiful representation of life for everyone, but especially for athletes.
NMU’s Campus Cinema club strived to connect with students during the first week of classes, and it worked.
“We thought it was the most relevant movie available now,” Helen Spehar, the club’s president, said. “We knew a lot of people were really excited about it.”
Lone students, groups of friends, families and faculty members lined up to watch this story unfold, and no matter how different each person was from one another, each person had a chance to see a piece of themselves in this movie.
Campus Cinema members put a lot of thought and effort into not just the movie itself, but the environment of the screening as well. The club has weekly meetings before each movie to set up concessions, posters and reward punch cards to anyone who watches the show with them. The showings themselves are often in Jamrich 1100, the largest lecture hall on campus.
Students of any and all walks of life are invited to join Campus Cinema and attend their meetings, which can be found on The Hub. As the school year starts, this could be a great opportunity for new and returning students to get out there and socialize with their peers.
