Boxing Gym

Besides being a very typical Frederick Wiseman documentary, "Boxing Gym" technically happens to be a boxing movie - and as such, out of every boxing movie you've ever seen, it offers the most unfiltered, down-to-earth look at what the sport is like - at least for mundane amateurs and semi-professionals. Much more warm-blooded, less addled by delusions of glory and menacing postures, no orchestral music dramatizing the training montages. You get a different sense of why people do it.

Late in Wiseman's observational portrait of a boxing gym, one person explains to another that there are two sides to boxing--the intellectual and the intuitive. This film definitely embraces the latter, bringing the rhythms of daily life in the gym to bear upon the viewer. So much in the gym depends on rhythm, and Wiseman's use of sound and editing only serves to highlight those rhythms. By the end, one has a real feeling for the place and for boxing, even though very little has been explained.

Wiseman considers this one of his 'dance' films along with 'Ballet' and La Danse' and it is clear why; the focus is the movement of the bodies that occupy this small boxing gym in Austin, Texas. Despite this small size - in terms of physical space, number of patrons and likely monetary turn over - it is most certainly an institution in the way Wiseman has come to understand and share with viewers. The interactions between patrons from all walks of makes for highly engaging viewing.

Fascinating and engrossing. Wiseman makes documentaries the way documentaries should be made.

"A privileged peek into a little pocket of something close to a functioning democratic system." - Andrew Schenker

Boring