One of the facts of which Alex Gibney reminds us in Boom! Boom! The World vs Boris Becker (Apple TV + from Friday) is that Becker wasn’t mind-blowingly successful on the court. He won six Grand Slams across his career – hardly shabby but a long way off Rafael Nadal’s 22 or Roger Federer’s 20.
And yet Becker remains one of the world’s most famous former-sportsmen – which was why his imprisonment in 2022 for hiding assets from creditors was so shocking to many. Icarus hadn’t just fallen to earth. He’d landed in the clinker, serving his term in a prison just a few miles from the Wimbledon Central Court which he regards his natural home.
Gibney’s two-part documentary suggests that people adore Becker not despite his flaws but because of them. He was a German tennis star who behaved in a distinctly un-German fashion. He would lose his temper, bawl at umpires and wasn’t above gamesmanship – as we see in old footage of a fake coughing fit with which he tried to throw John McEnroe off his stride.
Becker remains an enigma throughout this exhaustive – occasionally exhausting – four-and-a-half-hour film. Gibney interjects at several moments to point out inconsistencies in Becker’s interviews.
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The tennis player claims, for example, that he gave up sleeping pills after flopping at Wimbledon. Yet in his autobiography, he states that it was his ex-wife Barbara who threw away the medication – an assertion she supports on camera. Is he lying? Or is Becker, as Gibney suspects, a natural storyteller unable to resist framing the facts to fit the narrative?
Gibney can be hit or miss with his documentaries. Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief deservedly won three Emmys. But he let himself down in Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, in which he mocked Apple’s investment in Cork – illustrating the company’s operations in Ireland with diddly-dee music and a montage of cows in a field.
Boom! Boom! is better. It’s also far too long. At moments, it feels as if Gibney is coming at the same story from multiple angles. He circles again and again, for instance, to Becker’s struggles on the court following his shock victory over Kevin Curren in 1985 at the age of 17.
Becker seemed the real deal then. But Gibney shows that as a tennis star, he relied upon two qualities: brute force and a streak of determination that only surfaced when his back was against the wall. It was as if he subconsciously sabotaged himself so that he would kick into a higher gear – most notably doing a pummelling Wimbledon encounter with Andre Agassi (where Becker taunted Agassi’s wife, Brooke Shields).
But of course, a strategy that works on the court is no roadmap for life. In his business dealings, Becker employed the same tactic. Gamble big and then pull a victory out of the bag when all appeared lost. Alas, all was lost in the end, as the debts stacked up, and he ended up in prison.
If meandering, Boom! Boom! doesn’t lack star power. Becker sits down for two lengthy interviews. In the second, just before he is sentenced to jail, he is on the brink of tears.
Gibney also speaks to his ex-wife, Barbara, who recalls the racism she endured in Germany after she and Becker became one of the country’s highest-profile mixed couples. Later, she is understandably unimpressed about the betrayal she felt when Becker impregnated a model after a brief assignation in an office – not a broom cupboard, Boris insists – at a swanky London Sushi bar.
Tennis fans will salivate over the gallery of greats Gibney has assembled. Björn Borg, Becker’s teen idol, talks about the pressure of success. John McEnroe remembers promising to kick Becker’s a** during an exhibition game. Novak Djokovic explains why he brought Becker on as a coach (he hoped to absorb some of Boris’s flame-haired vim).
It’s a long, often gripping ride. By the end, Gibney cannot claim to have deciphered Becker. But maybe that’s the truth at the heart of the film. Teen prodigy turned financial basket-case, Boris is a mystery to many people. Especially, we are invited to conclude, to himself.
Boom! Boom! The World vs Boris Becker is available to stream from Apple TV+
