‘Athlete A’ Movie Review

Streamingvf
4 min readJan 10, 2021

As we as a whole aggregately dig further into the dinky, back-catalog crannies and seams of algorithmically-arranged substance on various streaming platforms, it becomes clearer that there’s a widespread quality-control issue with a large part of the material. Frequently there’s an overdose of something that is otherwise good, especially in the realms of true to life stories, where it can feel like filmmakers didn’t have a clue how to wrangle complex tangles of material into intelligible, manageable skeins of narratives. All the more importantly, there at times aren’t sufficient makers, chiefs and gatekeepers advising them to pare it down.

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Nonetheless, it’s something contrary to the case with Netflix’s Athlete A, the latest documentary from husband-and-spouse filmmaking team Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen. With a simple 103-minute running time, many watchers may end up wanting more. In fact, given the wealth of the material — which addresses defilement and eagerness in games, Cold War governmental issues, eating problems, abuse, everything being equal, and fearlessly decided investigative journalists — it’s a shame this didn’t get as much airtime as the streamer’s sprawling multi-part documentaries on Jeffrey Epstein (Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich) and the Rajneesh clique in Oregon (Wild Country).

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Packaged as a standalone film, this fascinating and delicately handled accounting focuses a light on the abuse scandal that was uncovered by the Indianapolis Star’s investigative revealing into USA Gymnastics (USAG). The fallout eventually sent games physician Larry Nassar to jail for life in 2017 for attacking many young ladies after an emotionally devastating trial where many of his casualties were allowed to offer supporting proof for the arraignment. Those tweaking, tearful however brave declarations were crucial in moving the debate about abuse and the need to accept survivors, especially in the wake of the then-developing Harvey Weinstein scandal.

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In addition to An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power and The Island President, Shenk and Cohen also collaborated on the outstanding doc feature Audrie and Daisy, which heard from teenager survivors not just about the primary sexual abuse they endured yet additionally the ensuing tormenting from neighbors and companions attempting to quiet them. By and by, the co-chiefs keep survivors at the focal point of the story here.

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It probably assisted with having previous top gymnast Jennifer Sey on board as a maker given that she composed a book on her experience of abuse and tormenting in the game, the informatively title Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics’ Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams. Sey appears on camera herself to contribute a more aerial perspective on the endemic issues inside the gymnastics world, having given up it back during the 1980s. However, for gymnasts Rachael Denhollander, Jessica Howard, Jamie Dantzcher and Maggie Nichols, the injuries are as yet raw.

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Nichols, it transpires, was “Athlete A,” the youngster protected by a pen name some legal records that initially aired Nassar’s abuse, which in Nichols’ case started when she was 15 years old. Like such countless predators, he was gifted at sending jargon and nonsense, in his case medical, to give himself cover for what even little youngsters like Nichols could detect was basically grabbing. She was overheard talking about it with another gymnast by a coach, and formal reports were taken care of back to USAG — however the organization, driven by foul CEO Steve Penny, quieted them up.

It was a pattern repeated again and again, and the film alludes to different cases of abuse in addition to Nassar’s that USAG covered yet that Indianapolis Star investigative journalists revealed. Be that as it may, the film doesn’t cover them with the same detail, sadly. It does, notwithstanding, address the abusive techniques for feted gymnastic coaches Bela and Marta Karolyi, Romanian emigres who once coached gold-medal-winning superstar Nadia Comaneci however abandoned toward the West. The way of life of harassing they cultivated at their ranch, where they worked with the crème de la crème of American gymnastics, remained unchallenged because it got results.

After seeing this film, you may never again watch archive footage of adolescents performing dazzling feats of acrobatics on the mat without feeling somewhat debilitated, contemplating the amount they were shamed when they put on a couple of pounds, were isolated from their families to keep them meek and betrayed each other. Nassar may have been abusing them, yet many of the ladies attest that he was also the solitary adult who was pleasant to them, maintaining their quiet by giving them candy and chocolate and the lone kind words they heard from the camp staff. In fact, eventually the gymnastics business doesn’t appear to be so unique in relation to the Rajneesh clique.

All things considered, it seems at occasions such as the film is holding back a spot when it very well may be building an all the more devastating investigate of the sexism of “female” sports, ones like gymnastics and ice skating, that force — either verifiably or expressly — standards about beauty and attitude (think about all those constrained, rictus-like grins) that have nothing to do with athletic ability and aptitude. Perhaps the filmmakers would not like to affront the participants who are as yet put resources into the game. Yet, you can’t yet trust that someday there will be a supercut with extra questioning, extra anger and more vintage material about the Eastern European wonders of old.

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