Bodybuilding in the cinema

We were all marked by a filmed performance ofArnold Schwarzenegger, for good or for bad. How not to be sensitive to its impressive build, either to admire it or to execute it? While it is common for bodybuilders to appear in the movies to play big tough roles, few films put the issue of bodybuilding at the heart of the story. Here we offer a presentation of some films in which this sport plays an important, even central role. You will find documentaries, action films, social or sentimental dramas. The list is by no means exhaustive, but rather presents the different ways in which bodybuilding has been shown on the big screen. The most motivated and exotic among you can tackle "I" (trailer), Indian film released in 2015. Please note, we are here on pure bollywood, three and a half hours of film, songs, a film show and dubious special effects... For the others, start with the four films listed below, you will already have a correct overview of what the cinema has produced in terms of large muscles.

Pumping Iron

Pumping Iron, released in 1977, is a documentary film that traces the preparation and participation of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the competition Mister Olympia from 1975. At the time of filming, he already had a seasoned career behind him, having won the title five times, and when he speaks to the camera during the numerous interviews, we discover a professional animated by an unlimited passion. . The documentary pays homage to bodybuilding as a sport and aesthetic discipline. The opening scene is particularly eloquent in this regard: rather than dumbbells and other weight machines, it is a dance hall that introduces the character. Two bodybuilders, a ballerina, the contrast is striking, the biceps of these being much thicker than the thighs of this one… But the objective is the same: “The jury does not look at you only when you hold the pose. , he looks at you all the time ”. Hence the work on the look, the slowness and the elegance of the movement between the poses. In the training room, there is a moment for pumping, and a moment when the fivefold Mister Universe corrects the poses of the youngest. The look higher, the arm straighter, the bust more assertive, etc. Once on stage, Schwarzenegger erases his competitors as he exposes his body with confidence and brilliance. He draws this confidence from his training and exemplary determination. Mental preparation is a major component in its success. His competitor in the heavyweight category, Lou Ferrigno, demonstrates this in the negative. Young, permanently supported by his father, both ambitious and intimidated by the greatness of his opponent, he lacks the ease and pleasure of Schwarzenegger once on stage. Unsurprisingly, the latter won the title once again, before putting an end to his professional career as a bodybuilder. Finally, Pumping Iron is nothing more than an excellent documentary on the preparation of an international sporting competition by a very high level athlete… with a lot of muscles.

Pain & Gain

Pain & Gain (No pain, no gain in French version) is a comedy action film released in 2013 featuring Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg and Anthony Mackie, based on a true story. Here, bodybuilding is not presented on its best day. Let's not be afraid of words, the whole movie is based on the fact that the three main characters, bodybuilders, are morons. "Muscles instead of the brain", that is the tone of this comedy, to be taken in the second degree. Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), self-declared head of the group, is a man of both disproportionate and very simple ambition: he wants to live the American dream, fulfill his desire to become "a monument of physical perfection", to to become someone. His bright plan, put together after attending a cartoonish talk about self-accomplishment and entrepreneurship, is to kidnap a wealthy client from his gym and extort his fortune. When his partners question the validity of the project, his response is a reflection of his finesse of mind: "I have seen a lot of films, I know how it works". With him, an even less enlightened friend, ready to do anything to also become someone - namely to be rich and find a woman despite his erectile problems - and another bodybuilder released from prison and having taken refuge in the Christian faith . The latter is surely the most endearing character of the film: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson fits perfectly the image of a big violent guy with rather convincing threats, but to whom one becomes attached because he does not really know why he does what he does, lost between what his faith dictates, his partner and his addiction to cocaine. We take a certain pleasure in seeing these three naive athletes overwhelmed by the events, killing their counterparts by accident, lifting dumbbells in the middle of a bloodbath to relax, and finally grilling on the barbecue, in public - the story being still true at this time - human limbs to make the evidence disappear… A light film, therefore, where the characters' desire for physical perfection ends up becoming the desire for wealth, and where the physical investment of bodybuilding becomes the tool of achievement. illegal, murderous, and particularly chaotic operations. We won't see this film for its approach to bodybuilding, but certainly for the action, humor and character IQ.

Bodybuilder

Bodybuilder is a French film released in 2014, directed by Roschdy Zem. We enter here in the register of social and family drama, since we follow the course of Antoine, in his twenties, engaged in a loan operation which leads him to be harassed by delinquents not particularly gentle. He was sent to his father in Saint-Etienne, where his mother hoped that he would be both protected and sufficiently isolated to return to normal activities. He has not seen his father for years and has very few memories of him. At fifty-eight, he is the local star bodybuilder, owner of a gym, entirely dedicated to his activity. The film opens with an excerpt from Pumping Iron, where Schwarzenegger explains how much he stands out from everything as he approaches a competition, where the only thing that matters is his physical and mental preparation. . This is ultimately the common thread of history, since the relationship between the father and his son is permanently conditioned by the training of the father, the food discipline to which he complies, and the friction caused by the presence of his son, completely foreign to this universe. If we quickly understand that, for Antoine, this stay in a disciplined and passionate world will serve as redemption, we however avoid the cliché scenario where the son would go to bodybuilding like his father and would find a way of emancipation. Rather, he watches an amused glance at his father, stealing some of his dietary supplements, trying on his stage briefs in front of a mirror, pumping up muscles he doesn't have. "This is my dad! ". We do not escape the expected framework of discovery-crisis-reconciliation, but the whole remains rather well done, without being extraordinary. The son comes to understand the pleasure his father finds in bodybuilding, while the father rediscovers the affection he has for his son. Here, the emphasis is on the demands of discipline: food, very frequent training, loneliness, etc. It will finally be the last competition for this old bodybuilder, a bitter defeat, which, combined with the arrival of his son, pushes him to stop. " It is too hard ". We will still remember the settling of scores between the delinquents who are chasing Antoine and about twenty bodybuilders, in a small laundry. No fighting, just threats, but the situation is funny. "It's just the bloat, in three months if I want I'm like them," says the owner of the place. Here we have the whole issue of the film: bodybuilding is presented as a misunderstood, mocked and misunderstood universe, into which we enter little by little, to end up seeing it differently and appreciating it for what it is. Certainly not from the bloat.

Teddy Bear

Teddy Bear is a Danish film released in 2012, with Kim Kold as main actor. Dennis, a professional bodybuilder, in his forties, living alone with a castrating mother, decides to go to Thailand on the advice of his uncle, recently married to a Thai woman met on the spot. Immersed immediately in the sex tourism circuit, his discomfort is palpable, and the organized meetings are a failure. The title of the film then takes on its full meaning: a man of gigantic proportions perceived as a tough guy, who hides a particularly tender personality, who dares not say no to anyone and who does everything to fade away. Out of all the actors we meet in the films presented here, Kim Kold is surely the most impressive. Tall, with a hard, square face, his chest covered with a generous tattoo, his physiognomy is as important in the role as his acting. It is finally through a man met at the local gym that Dennis meets love, a simple and shy love, like the character, that his mother will find it hard to let enter into their relationship. The realization is simple and effective, without sentimental heaviness, without romantic dialogues, without exaggeration. Here, bodybuilding is the negative, it is the cause of this body shell which prevents the person from expressing himself. Finally, less a love film than the initiatory journey of a man in trouble with his inner life.

Conclusion

If there is one trait in all of these approaches to bodybuilding, it is surpassing oneself. If he is purely competitive in Pumping Iron, he takes more psychological forms in the other films. Personal success, family life, emancipation ... The culture of the body, the discipline and the efforts it requires, are the visible part of this work on oneself. It is expected that the treatment of this question will be less deep in a film like Pain & Gain than in Teddy Bear, for example, but the interest is the same. If you are looking for a film that is about bodybuilding itself, Pumping Iron is a classic, and in the more recent ones, we recommend Generation Iron (trailer) or Bigger Stronger Faster (trailer). Apart from these documentary films, the other productions tackle rather the question of the bodybuilder as a person, and the link between his sports practice and his social existence.

Contrary to the detractors who see in it only the “swelling”, one understands well that the activity goes much further than that. A complete investment of body and mind, where, ultimately, rather than strength, it is personality which is imprinted in the muscles.