From the daily archives:

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

The Bodybuilder and I

by Brooke Smith on April 24, 2007

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Editor’s Note: In addi­tion to Jay and myself, from time to time we’d like to fea­ture some guest reviewers who can help us cover even more films than we can on our own. Brooke Smith is a pro­fes­sional journ­alist and movie buff, and best of all, she’s my wife. Hopefully, I can con­vince her to post a few more of her reviews.

The Bodybuilder and I

The Bodybuilder and I (Director: Bryan Friedman, Canada, 2007): I was looking for­ward to this doc­u­mentary as I have been known to do a few bench presses at the gym. But body­building was simply the back­drop for this very per­sonal journey for a son and father.

Bill Friedman had been a bad hus­band, a work­aholic and an absent father. But after a second divorce and a bout of depres­sion, he quit his job at the law firm, headed to the gym and started pumping iron. In fact, he became a com­pet­itive bodybuilder.

Knowing this inform­a­tion from reading the syn­opsis gave me a bias. I didn’t like Bill. He was obnox­ious, gruff and…well, let’s just say I felt for his son, dir­ector Bryan Friedman. I took Bryan’s side against an absent father who never had time for his kids, who was only looking out for number one, per­haps someone who didn’t deserve a son.

Yet, at a turning point in the film, when Bryan and Bill dis­cuss the past, I realize that it takes two people to create anim­osity. Bryan has to let go of his anger. Ah, Bryan, get over it. Stop whining and blaming your dad for your problems.

As father and son jour­neyed to self-discovery, I jour­neyed with them. And I think that’s what makes the film very strong. Their feel­ings come right off the screen. The all-business dad and the woe-is-me son are human. And in between more comedic sec­tions: Bill prac­ti­cing his routine (for the body­building com­pet­i­tion), tan­ning or trying on his cos­tume, the rela­tion­ship is starting to develop through the body­building, the sweat and the inev­it­able tears.

The father/son mes­sage comes through: although you can’t make up for lost time, life is too short to hold grudges. Forgive and forget and start anew. And that’s what Bryan and Bill are doing.

9/10(9/10)

UPDATE: The film was awarded Best Canadian Feature Documentary at the Hot Docs Awards cere­mony held on April 27. Congratulations to dir­ector Bryan Friedman and everyone involved in the film.

Tagged as: #hotdocs07, family, fathers-and-sons

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Without The King

by James McNally on April 24, 2007 · 8 comments

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Without The King

Without The King (Director: Michael Skolnik, USA, 2007): Swaziland has a pop­u­la­tion of just over a mil­lion people, and 42.6% of them are HIV pos­itive, the highest infec­tion rate in the world. In addi­tion, more than half the pop­u­la­tion live on less than a dollar a day. Meanwhile, as the last func­tioning mon­archy in Africa, the king and his many wives live in luxury obli­vious to the suf­fering of their people.

Director Michael Skolnik, just 28 years of age, has known Swaziland’s King Mswati III since 1999. After taking a Zulu lan­guage class at UCLA and dis­cov­ering that his teacher was an advisor to the king, he became inter­ested in the Kingdom of Swaziland and its unique polit­ical situ­ation. As the king got to know Michael’s work as a film­maker better, he asked him to make a film about him. So this could very well have been called “About The King.”

Instead, when Skolnik spent time in the country, he dis­covered the grinding poverty, the soaring HIV rate, and the people’s sim­mering anger. Mswati’s father, King Sobhuza II, banned all polit­ical parties back in the 1970s, and the king appoints the prime min­ister, the cab­inet, and a third of the mem­bers of the largely inef­fec­tual par­lia­ment. Despite claiming to make his decisions based on con­sulta­tion with “the people” and their rep­res­ent­at­ives, King Mswati doesn’t really seem to know what’s going on out­side his lavish palace. He acknow­ledges that when he goes out on cere­mo­nial visits, he knows that offi­cials clean things up and hide the reality from him. And yet, he seems to do nothing. In the inter­views Skolnik con­ducted with him for the film, the king, not yet 40, seems affable but without much substance.

In con­trast, his eldest daughter, Princess Sikhanyiso, intro­duces her­self onscreen by per­forming a rap. At the age of 18, she is about to leave Swaziland to attend col­lege in California, and at the begin­ning of the film, she seems spoiled and self-centred.

We also are intro­duced to sev­eral local polit­ical act­iv­ists who speak can­didly and at great risk about their frus­tra­tion with the lack of demo­cracy. A new con­sti­tu­tion is approved but without any input from the people, and polit­ical parties are still banned. The situ­ation seems to be escal­ating, and politi­cians’ offices are being bombed.

Meanwhile, with time away from her sheltered life­style, the prin­cess begins to see some of the real prob­lems facing her country. She repeats what many others do in the film, that the Swazi people don’t want to get rid of the mon­archy, that it’s part of their cul­ture. The film’s title comes from some­thing she says: “Without the king, we have no cul­ture.” However, at least for now, with the king they have no justice.

By the end of the film, she’s begun to grow up a little, and with her sister accom­panies the film crew to one of the many AIDS orphan­ages in the country. She seems genu­inely moved, and vows to make some needed changes. One wants to believe her.

The truth is that between AIDS, poverty, and a brewing rebel­lion, Swaziland could extinct itself within a gen­er­a­tion. This film might actu­ally make a dif­fer­ence. Not by shaming western audi­ences into more dona­tions, though I’m sure that wouldn’t hurt, but because of the director’s intimate access to the royal family. When they see this film, they won’t be able to ignore the urgent needs of their country, will­fully or otherwise.

For that reason, it doesn’t really matter what I think of the film. For the record, I’d say that it was a well-made but not neces­sarily innov­ative film. The use of mournful music over the scenes of poverty bothered me a little. But just because of the poten­tial of the film to make a dif­fer­ence to an entire country, I’m grading it a little higher. Let’s hope the king agrees with me.

Here is the Q&A with dir­ector Michael Skolnik from after the screening:

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Duration: 21:32

8/10(8/10)

UPDATE: The film was awarded the Special Jury Prize International Feature Documentary at the Hot Docs Awards cere­mony held on April 27. Congratulations to dir­ector Michael Skolnik and everyone involved in the film.

Tagged as: #hotdocs07, Documentaries, Hot Docs, politics, swaziland

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