Viewing ‘King Richard’ through the prism of our times

It is a quiet scene, not germane to the plot or destiny of any of the characters, but it is one of the most powerful in the new film “King Richard,” Will Smith’s biopic of Richard Williams. Richard and his wife, Oracene Price, (played by Aunjanue Ellis) watch on a small television the news footage of March 3, 1991. Motorist Rodney King is being beaten by members of the Los Angeles Police Department while surrounding police officers watch. Oracene offhandedly comments something to the effect of, “At least they have it on video this time.” In the next room, Richard and Oracene’s girls, tennis prodigies Venus, then 10, and Serena, then 9, with their sisters, Yetunde, Isha and Lyndrea, are shrieking and playing and carrying on as kids do. For the film, it is just another news item of daily injustice — but one containing the hope that the existence of video will finally justify a reality much of the country does not believe exists.

For the remainder of the film, there is no further mention of the King beating, nor does the movie acknowledge its bloody denouement the following year — a five-day uprising that left more than 50 people dead, more than 2,300 injured and an estimated $1 billion in property damage to South Central L.A. after a predominately white Simi Valley jury acquitted the four officers. “King Richard” is about a man with an outlandish, quintessentially American idea of entrepreneurship — that his two youngest daughters are tennis geniuses (“I have a plan,” is the film’s foreshadowing mantra), and for two hours, 24 minutes, the film follows his relentless and unshakable faith in that plan, no matter how many upper-crust blue bloods or nosy neighbors treat him as a crazy man.

Yet, in that brief moment on the television, when LAPD officers are mercilessly beating King, the state metaphorically is beating Black America — and a movie ostensibly about a legendary tennis story set nearly 30 years ago is soberingly contemporary. The King video did not…