Film Review: Pumping Iron (1977)

Watched the '77 documentary Pumping Iron last night. The documentary, for those who don't know, was directed by George Butler and Robert Fiore, based on a book by Charles Gaines and starred the amazing Arnold Schwarzenegger and many of his bodybuilding contemproaries in the Gold's Gym in Venice, California. It is, I assure you, clever and very much worth a viewing.

A couple thoughts, in no particular order:

a.

Arnold, unlike his more meathead compatriots, is fully in command of the psychological aspect of professional bodybuilding (which is essentially intensive weight training followed by "posing" for judges). Arnold cripples his opponents mentally, subtlely sabbatoging their confidence and hamstringing their posing. He explains this method in a couple scenes:

Franco [another top bodybuilder] is pretty smart, but Franco's a child, and when it comes to the day of the contest, I am his father. He comes to me for advices. So it's not that hard for me to give him the wrong advices.

Moreover, one of Arnolds competitors, the monstrous Lou Ferrigno is especially supceptible to his barbs. Sitting with him and his family the day of the competition in 1975, Arnold jokes that Lou isn't ready, would rather have the competition in a month. Lou, his slow-wittedness emphasized by his bulk, visibly blanches. Later, Arnold ruins his pre-show warmup by mocking his audible weightlifting:

Arnold: What did you say Lou? What did you say?
Lou: I'm training Arnold! Gotta get a good pump!
Arnold: You make too much noise! Has to be very quiet in here, like in a Church!

When the actual competition comes up, Lou fails to pose well, poses shyly, and is defeated. In any case, Arnold's psychological advantage in the competition is acute, and he makes his eventual victories seem expected or even normal.

b.

Arnold's a natural showman, a patron of the sport, to borrow a French cycling term. He's supremely confident without being more than mildly arrogant. Moreover, he sees his training as more than just drudgery, or the necessary evil of the job. Arnold loves to lift, in a supremely visceral way:

The greatest feeling you can get in a gym, or the most satisfying feeling you can get in the gym is... The Pump. Let's say you train your biceps. Blood is rushing into your muscles and that's what we call The Pump. You muscles get a really tight feeling, like your skin is going to explode any minute, and it's really tight - it's like somebody blowing air into it, into your muscle. It just blows up, and it feels really different. It feels fantastic.

He says his, wearing a checked shirt tight around his massive biceps, proud teutonic jaw jutting with a brilliant smile. He's a charming barbarian, a willing sybarite.

It's [the pump] as satisfying to me as, uh, coming is, you know? As, ah, having sex with a woman and coming. And so can you believe how much I am in heaven? I am like, uh, getting the feeling of coming in a gym, I'm getting the feeling of coming at home, I'm getting the feeling of coming backstage when I pump up, when I pose in front of 5,000 people, I get the same feeling, so I am coming day and night. I mean, it's terrific. Right? So you know, I am in heaven.

Arnold gives these lines with great gusto and palpable enthusiasm. He's loving his youth, being a 28 year old 6'2, 240 pound Greek god, the easy women, the thrill of lifting, the absolute lion-king hold he has on everyone around him. These annecdotes reveal how preternaturally comfortable Arnold is in his skin, his real, engaging personality, and his control of his narrative. There's no moment in this film where you see anything of Arnold you don't mean to see. That's breathaking poise, and I'm not surprised, seeing him as a younger man, that he has done so spectacularly well.


c.

Arnold's sucess can be understood through a couple of dimensions--personality, talent, psychological advantage--but mainly through his perspecacious understanding of himself as sculpture. He says as much, in an interview:

Interviewer: Do you visualize yourself as a living sculpture?
Arnold: Yes, definitely. Good bodybuilders have the same mind when it comes to sculpting, than a sculptor has.

This is amply demonstrated in the course of the documentary. Many of these men have large muscles, firmly established deltoids, but Arnold seems especially atuned to the sculptural qualities of his form, that he is statuary sprung to life, carved in living flesh and not hewen from marble. He intuitively sees himself as art:

I don't have any weak points. I had weak points three years ago, but my main thing in mind is, my goal always was, to even out everything to the point... that everything is perfect. Which means if I want to increase one muscle a half inch, the rest of the body has to increase. I would never make one muscle increase or decrease, because everything fits together now, and all I have to do is get my posing routine down more perfect, which is almost impossible to do, you know. It's perfect already.

There's an engaging Greekness to his form, the finely muscled back resembling that curved Greek discus thrower, tensing.




More than just "looking" like greek statuary, Arnold understands that movement between the proscribed poses, each emphasizing different aspects of human musculature, should also be smooth, flowing, and statuesque. The other bodybuilders have their poses down, straining, flexing, neatly muscled, but their interstitial movement is choppy, poorly planned. Arnold understands, intuitively, his body as sculpture, as three dimensional moment, and he moves from pose to pose with fluid power, never breaking from the illusion that he's animated marble.


Remarkable. At the end of the competition in Pretoria in '75, Arnold pauses, after it is clear he has won (the other men have already taken their places on the podium as #2 and #3) and places, with wistful playfullness, his fist under his firmly jutted jaw. Visual quotation: "the thinker!" It is just a moment, but it is sly, and canny. Arnold gets it: he's sculpture, animated, living in the round, perfect as can be through training, and his poses aren't artificial exercises in showing muscle groups but are organic, merely angles of his perfection.

A sight to see: the perfect body, animated volumetrically, with a keen understanding of aesthetic line. Watch this documentary and you'll understand why he won so many competitions and why his career has been so outstanding.