Portrayed by: Mike Faist
Film: Challengers
In more ways than one, Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is a character study. It demands that we pay attention to all three of the main characters individually, then as an incredible trio who can’t help but consistently orbit around one another. They’re each profoundly flawed, complex individuals who make mistakes because they’re trying to find some sort of meaning in life.
For Art Donaldson, much of his character arc throughout the film centers on falling in and out of love with tennis. It serves as a precise exposure to what happens when you love something to the point that it no longer loves you back. The same could also be said about his marriage, but more on that later. The common denominator in this film is tennis, but it’s also an intricately tangled web made with love, brokenness, and perhaps more tragically, an inability to belong somewhere fully.
Art Donaldson and the Desire to Belong
The film doesn’t tell us much about Art’s home life. We don’t see his family throughout the film, nor do we hear anything about them, but we can make specific assessments based on what Challengers shows us. The only living relative we know of who seems to care about him is his grandmother, but in the future, she’s already passed away. Who’s left? Is there anyone? He’s a professional competitor, but the only people truly beside him other than his team of specialists are his wife, daughter, and mother-in-law. So, his family either doesn’t care much about his career, never did in the first place, or they’ve been absent longer than they’ve been present. Additionally, his devotion to both his wife, Tashi Duncan, and former best friend, Patrick Zweig, gives us enough to piece together this idea that his childhood hasn’t been full of love.
Further, in many ways, we could also tie what we know about his curiosity at the academy and his desire to know more about Tashi and Patrick’s relationship to his need to belong. He even admits it out loud, rather quickly and sincerely that he doesn’t want to feel left out. If he is someone without a close-knit family, then it’s also easy to essentially look back and wonder if this is where much of his repression comes from. Who’s told him it’s okay to be exactly who he wants to be? Who’s given him the chance to screw up and get back up again? [This idea also applies to Tashi and Patrick in various areas as well. See, if these characters had a therapist, we wouldn’t be in this mess. But alas.]
As mentioned in my feature, There Are No Teams – It’s a Three Way Love Story, I essentially reason with all their mistakes by tying them to this plunging need to be with each other. Art Donaldson wants to belong, but unlike Tashi and Patrick, he lacks the confidence to believe in himself fully. In the hotel room, he asks Tashi which one of them she’s referring to with her invitation while Patrick gets up and jumps on the bed beside her. Art continuously questions himself because, deep down, he doesn’t believe he deserves much. He’s unsure of himself, his craft, and his abilities.
What he isn’t unsure of, however, are four things: he loves tennis, his wife and kid, and he loves Patrick. (He might not admit this one aloud until he shows it in the end, but we can’t deny that it’s there.) When he muddies the waters at Stanford, he’s once again trying desperately to get details about a relationship he isn’t a part of because he wants to be. Life, nevertheless, has other plans because that’s the storm of living. As Luca Guadagnino confirms, he’s both a little jealous and wants Patrick, too. “They’re fighting, but they’re taking care of one another. […] It’s about being jealous of one another and wanting one another.”
There’s a warmth in his eyes when he wipes the sugar off of Patrick’s cheeks, and there’s mischief and validation in the way he chomps down on the churro. The problem is that Art doesn’t realize that he can have both. If Tashi and Patrick came up to him with the preposition, he’d jump, but on his own, he’s merely swimming through his sorrow to belong with them because he’s on his own. He’s on his own and they’re two of the most important people in his life. [Again, we can say all of this, Patrick, too, and will in his deep dive.] In the same article, I emphasize agency as the film’s true north—Challengers ensures that these characters have choices, whether good or bad and said choices move the story along.
Art pokes the bear, Patrick and Tashi both call him out on it and then they turn around and include him in their equation by pushing each other. In a nutshell, this feeling of belonging to something is an invisible thread that’s skated through each of them since the night on the beach. This invisible string, even while it’s fractured, is what fuels him, and next is his love for tennis.
When What You Love Breaks You
Anyone who loves what they do for a living also knows there’s a point where it breaks you. I remember a teacher once saying, “When you love what you do, you don’t work a day in your life,” but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. As human beings, we aren’t designed to give every piece of ourselves to something. We aren’t fit to work without any play, and even though that’s what tennis starts as—it’s so much more than a game. In Tashi’s words, it’s a relationship. Both between the players and simultaneously between the player and the game itself. And relationships require commitment, which is precisely why it could be so deeply draining when it’s all you focus on.
Whether it’s tennis, writing, acting, or even saving lives, there comes a point in a person’s life when the joy that jumpstarted everything dims. There are countless exceptional line deliveries throughout the movie from all the actors, but Art’s “I’m tired” haunts me the most. Because, even as I write this with the score drumming through my ears and eagerness beyond compare because I adore this movie and writing with every bone in my body, I’m tired. Not to mention the fact that reeling from an injury or any sort of comeback takes time. It’s easy to look at him and say he should count his blessings, but it’s also necessary to understand the psychological impact of the thing you love physically shattering you.
Further, as he tells Tashi, he knows he’s playing for the both of them. He knows he’s failing her. He sees it. And up until that last second when his world crumbles again, he still looks to her for guidance. So much of Art Donaldson’s character arc reminds me of a single moment in Fleabag when the titular character goes to confession for the first time: “I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I think I’ve been getting it wrong. And I know that’s why people want people like you in their lives because you just tell them how to do it. You. Just tell them what to do and what they’ll get at the end of it.” This bit hurts a lot more when you think about Art saying, “I just want you to tell me that you’ll love me no matter what,” to which Tashi responds, “What am I, Jesus?” Art’s dead serious, “Yeah” is both heartbreaking and so wildly sincere that I can’t even laugh at it anymore.
These are the very scenes that show us his desperation and the amount that he consistently bottles up. It brings his exhaustion to life in a way that feels palpable, and Mike Faist’s performance sells the emotions in a breathtaking manner. It’s raw, fully transparent, and brings to the surface all of Art’s pain and longings. He is ready to forgo it all to be a dad, a normal dude—and what? As he should, really. We affectionally call him a lapdog to counter Patrick insulting his “yes ma’am” personality, but there’s something so achingly heartbreaking about how all he wants is the bare minimum—to be held until he falls asleep, even after she states that she’ll leave him if he doesn’t win.
At the same time, as previously mentioned when discussing agency in this film, Art isn’t stupid. He knows about Atlanta and he chooses not to say anything about it. He chooses not to ask. This time, he’s okay with being left out. He puts up a front with Patrick in the sauna, continues to repress his love for him, and drives all his attention into trying one last time. So much of this again begs the question of who loved Art Donaldson when he was a kid, and did they show it? Did they give him enough adoration for him to understand that he can love himself? I’m going to go ahead and say no and also note how this specific absence in his life is something that we can also assume about Patrick. It adds up to why they cling to each other when they’re teenagers and how their love language never dies even when too much time passes.
In a nutshell, Art is broken. They all are. But where the film stands, Art’s brokenness is directly tied to an exhaustion he doesn’t quite know how to overcome—an exhaustion we don’t have the answer to in the real world, let alone the fictional. Do we blame capitalism here? Or do we blame how human beings put others on a pedestal without ever realizing that they aren’t puppets to be controlled? A bit of both.
Art Donaldson’s Role in the Trio
Once more, with feeling, it’s not a love triangle—it’s a three-way love story. It’s not about Art and Tashi or Patrick and Art. It’s also not about Patrick and Tashi. It’s about Art, Tashi, and Patrick. It’s about a connection they build on a late night by the beach with invisible strings perpetually binding them together. They each have a role: fire, ice, and earth. Balance. Fire and ice alone are destructive. One or the other with the grounding presence—the center, Tash—will lead to chaos.
Patrick and Art are chaos together (and perfectly so)—they need her to balance the striking energy that consistently burns. Art and Tashi are soft and tender, but at times, they need the heat tripled. Tashi and Patrick burn hot and fast, so they need the calm that’ll bring them back down to reality.
To repeat—in all three deep dives.
Patrick is fully open about his sexuality. We have confirmation that he’s bisexual because of the split second with the Tinder matches showing both men and women. Art represses his sexuality like his life depends on it because, once more, Art needs people to guide him. There are thousands of ways the threesome scene could’ve gone if Tashi didn’t stop them from kissing. Still, what Art doesn’t realize (even while he thinks he’s too old) is that his need not to feel left out is linked to his desires for both of them. Thus, when he screams in the end, it almost parallels the scream he heard from Tashi the first time he watched her play. He’d never seen anything like it, and he had never experienced anything similar, either. This time, it’s almost like it finally clicks. It’s freeing.
It’s at that moment where Art (maybe, hopefully) understands that this is all possible. After all that frustration is out of him and he continues playing, he and Patrick enter back into a relationship. It turns into a sort of love-making that’s even rarer than anything Tashi hoped she’d see. But this relationship does not end after a winner is crowned. It’s something that’s going to continue off the court, too. Patrick and Art can’t spend two seconds together without giggling and pushing each other’s buttons. They’re finally back in that place, and it feels right again.
When Tashi screams at the end with her glowing smile on full display, it’s because she finally gets what she wants, which is some good fu%$ing tennis. And the best part of it is that she gets it from her husband and their soulmate. It’s jarring how people could come out of this movie and choose sides when the invisible string threading them together isn’t all that hidden. It’s bold. It’s obvious. Tashi needs Art’s tenderness, but she also needs Patrick’s gravitas, too. Patrick needs Art’s playfulness, but he also needs Tashi’s fire. And Art needs every part of them with every bone in his body.
Art is soft; he’s delicate with his movements when it comes to Tashi, but we catch moments of his fervency when he bites her wrist or crunches down on the churro with Patrick. We see the fire in his tennis by the end. He wouldn’t be the player he is without it. There’s deep, immovable passion in all of them. When it comes to Art, he’s searching for a place to belong—to show every part of himself and know that he’ll be loved in spite of his flaws.
First Featured Image Credit: ©2024 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc.