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Nov. 9, 2007
Pumping iron with dad
New film offers a chance for father-son bonding.
RON FRIEDMAN
If you think your parents are embarrassing, wait till you meet Bryan Friedman's dad. The bodybuilder and I is a documentary by a Toronto filmmaker, Bryan Friedman, telling the story of his estranged father, Bill, who, late in life, began dedicating himself to the sport of bodybuilding.
For most of the 90 minutes of the film, what you see on the screen is a series of senior citizens, working out in the gym, wearing tiny underwear and striking poses in front of the mirror.
The movie follows the Friedmans for several months, leading up to a regional bodybuilding competition, where the father competes against seven other men in the over-50 category.
Along the way, we observe the older man's path towards achieving his physical ideal. From the food he eats to the outfit he wears, everything in Friedman's life is focused on re-gaining the first place title, and beating out his competition. We witness his harsh fitness and strength training regiment, his high-protein and carbohydrate-free diet, the choreography of his routine to the music of the Superman theme song, his choosing out of a suitable outfit for the performance and the gradual darkening of his skin to competition requirements.
We also get to meet some of his competitors. Three of his biggest rivals are other Jewish older men, who, late in their lives, decided to commit themselves to the grueling life of daily workouts, harsh diets and tight pants.
But the shallow world of bodybuilding isn't really what this movie is supposed to be about. The filmmaker uses the documentary as an opportunity to spend some time with and better get to know his father, who left his mother, brother and him when he was just a baby.
By accompanying his father on his quest, the younger Friedman gets a second chance to build a relationship with his deadbeat dad.
Both father and son, appear in the movie as generally disagreeable people. Bill, with his unrelenting focus on his body, appears as a vain and juvenile egoist, while Bryan, who confesses to being incapable of real commitment, comes off as cynical, disparaging, begrudging and snide. "Here's a guy who can spend so much time and energy on a bizarre hobby but couldn't find the energy and time to spend with his own son," says Bryan at one point in the film.
Luckily, you don't have to like the characters in order to relate to them. Several scenes, in which you can see that, despite the enormous gulf between the men, there is a mutual caring that touches the heart, are what make the movie. One scene especially, in which Bill confesses that he only agreed to make the film because it was important to his son, indicates that perhaps the making of this documentary can, in a small way, redeem him for not being around as a father. Bryan, who is afraid that he might be all too similar to his father, finds out that that might not be all bad.
This is a painfully honest movie that takes father-son relationships into previously unexplored ground.
The bodybuilder and I is Friedman's directorial debut. It won first place in Toronto's Hot Docs competition and will be appearing in Vancouver until Nov. 18.
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