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Zion movie review: Netflix documentary is a soulless, tired rendition of an oft-heard but inspirational story
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Zion movie review: Netflix documentary is a soulless, tired rendition of an oft-heard but inspirational story

Anupam Kant Verma • August 14, 2018, 17:56:12 IST
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Zion is a compelling, truly inspirational story that cried out for a more accomplished, less obtrusive telling.

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Zion movie review: Netflix documentary is a soulless, tired rendition of an oft-heard but inspirational story

A pivotal moment in Zion, the latest short documentary out on Netflix, shows the titular protagonist quite literally coming face to face with his indignant and angry self in a shot that resembles a split-screen mirror image. This is intended to be the moment from where Zion begins to soar, shedding the ballast of his limitations behind. Sadly, that is also the juncture where our interest in his story begins to wane dramatically. But it’s for no fault of his own. Director Floyd Russ had all the ingredients of telling a compelling, truly inspirational story. In Zion, he had a determined young man eager to prove himself even though he’d been born without legs. The fact that he chose to make good in wrestling, traditionally an able bodied man’s sport, made his narrative doubly compelling. Then, there was a childhood spent shuttling between foster homes, having been abandoned by his parents at birth. The moment he stepped out onto the wrestling mat, he’d be confronting a foe greater than any human being — his past. But his unrelenting will to succeed and an equally determined coach ensure that his story would be told for years to come. [caption id=“attachment_4965281” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]Zion promo poster. Netflix Zion promo still. Netflix[/caption] Russ’ telling of Zion’s story, however, resembles an extended sports brand commercial that gets punctured and runs out of gas even within its short 11-minute runtime. The director makes the grievous error of allowing his dangerously exaggerated style to encroach upon the purity of a vital story. Putting the worst foot forward repeatedly, he seldom lets Zion and the people important to him do the talking without having to contend with a blaring, weepy, faux-inspirational soundtrack and often horridly edited images. Make no mistake: this is a vital, vital tale. The young man is up against seemingly insurmountable odds. Ghosts of his past are creeping in. But he isn’t giving up. His coach won’t allow him to. Zion, he would remind him every day, is strong and stable like the mountain. And unyielding. But instead of servicing the story with a lubricated, smooth style, Russ runs over it with a bulldozer. I’d go as far as to say that it turns Zion into a mere prop that is occasionally permitted to speak lines as corny as the sign he made to ask his girl out. Unlike that sign though, the lines don’t always work. We want to go closer — to hear the manic sounds of the battle raging inside him: his hopes, his fears, his joy. But it is near impossible to penetrate the heavily colourised images Russ wraps around him to reach the throbbing, human core of Zion. It turns into a great true story hardly told. Mercifully, there are a few good things that escape the guillotine. In particular, the fact that this is a story without any certain conclusion. Zion’s spirit matters more than his triumphs. His great achievement lies in going on. There is no final obstacle for him to surmount. There are none in a life that will always throw more and more stones your way. If you choose to build with them, you’d keep on. Zion, having failed at a crucial juncture, simply keeps at it, picking up another trade to learn. That is what we take away from this film. In spite of all the pyrotechnics and violent assembly of images, the heart of a story remains all too powerful to yield. We wish for a longer runtime to tell the story at a more deliberate, unhurried pace. Had that happened, it could have gone a long way towards mending the aesthetic defects of the film. As it stands, Zion remains a great story that cried out for a more accomplished, less obtrusive telling. In failing to do so, it comes out as a soulless, tired rendition of an oft-heard tale. There’s nothing worse that can be said about a film based on a true story.

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