Television would seem to have devoured the documentary film whole: in 90- second bites on the nightly news, in the lapel-grabbing journalism of 60 Minutes, even in the nature studies that now stud the pbs schedule. So why put nonfiction on the big screen? Because there are stories whose subjects, and filmmakers whose points of view, demand the isolation and intensity of the movie-house experience. One such story is The Times of Harvey Milk, winner of this year's Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Its plot--all-American guy shoots the mayor of San Francisco and a gay-activist supervisor, then goes to trial pleading that junk food made him do it--was as farfetched and compelling as that of any paranoiac political thriller. Herewith, reports on three more documentaries that transcend the newsreel:
PUMPING IRON II: THE WOMEN
What is male body building--with its heroic chestwork, Alpine biceps and sculpted glutes--if not an artful parody of the average male body? And what is female body building if not a parody of the male body too? Instead of aspiring to Daisy Mae curves, and turning to cotton or cosmetic surgery to fulfill the image, women on the cutting edge of body building demand the taut bulges of an Arnold Schwarzenegger and pump iron (lift weights) like crazy to achieve them. Pumping Iron (1977) was a deadpan docufarce that transformed Schwarzenegger from a curiosity into a celebrity. Pumping Iron II: The Women will probably not do the same for Bev Francis, the Australian Amazon who was at the controversial center of the 1983 Caesars Palace World Cup championship in Las Vegas. The body she has created for herself is, to untutored eyes, too awesome and frightening, a kind of self-imposed freak of nature. For that reason, Pumping Iron II is better, funnier and more troubling than its popular predecessor.
Body fashions are, above all, a matter of aesthetics. A woman who chooses to remake her body may be developing a more efficient living machine, but she is also helping to redefine the boundaries of femininity. One man's Helen of Troy is another man's sideshow hermaphrodite. So when Francis strolls in to meet her more discreetly muscled competitors for the World Cup, she causes the commotion of a punk rocker intruding on an at home at Lady Astor's. Producer- Director George Butler catches many weirdly poignant moments, backstage and onstage, from a sport in which women declare their sexual independence by miming the physical self-absorption of the male jock. It's like a Jane Fonda workout carried to the edge of absurdity.
By Richard Corliss
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