Week 9 Screening 1

Pulling John. 2009. Vassiliki Khonsari, Sevan Matossian.

Pulling John is the unfortunately named documentary about the American world champion arm-wrestler John Brzenk. Opening with a real life introduction by a competition announcement it then segues into a futuristic multimedia introduction by way of newsreels and headlines. Although slick this digital montage has little relevance to the documentary itself or the world of arm wrestling for that matter. It has no relevance to the narrative and is thus out of place, when a piece of the narrative such as this is out of place it interrupts the flow of the documentary. This is mainly because the section is noticeably out of place and this makes you consider the format of the film, thus interrupting the processing of information. This use of digital animation for exposition is repeated throughout the film as if marking chapters, although incongruous it does gives the film a lighter tone.

As with many narcissistic endeavors there is much potential humor in the scenarios observed, but this film does not explore the potential of the inbuilt humorous scenarios, this film could have had a completely different slant if the producer had wanted to send up its protagonists (see below for unfortunate quotes). This film illustrates that people can and will compete in just about anything as long as there is recognition.

The documentary introduces us to Brzenks competition in the world of arm wrestling and in doing so reveals the slanted perspective of the documentary somewhat. Before introducing us to his Russian competitor we are informed that in Russia arm wrestlers receive state help while in America they receive none. This seems like an attempt to pitch a scenario to the viewer (Brzenk as underdog) and illustrates bias on behalf of the filmmaker. Imparting this piece of information before we meet his Russian opponent prejudices us towards the subject. It is designed to inform the viewer whose side they are on in the upcoming battle.

The film often strays from the narrative in that certain elements of the participating subjects lives are overly documented. Instead of being another strand to run alongside the main story they instead wander and diverge away from the stories core. This may be to do with the documentary subjects eagerness to impart information on their lives. People like attention, they may not crave it but it enlivens them, this is evident in some of the interviews in Pulling John when some of the past masters of arm wrestling are enlivened in the presence of the camera. This aspect of the documentary underlines the necessity of having a good editor as it would have benefitted from a tighter narrative.

Unfortunate quote num 1 “I’ve pulled Yoshi three other times”

Unfortunate quote num 2 “When I pull Brzenk I will get a big rush ”