Rising Phoenix

The Netflix documentary "Rising Phoenix" explains that Paralympics is "para" as in "parallel," not "paralyzed." The world-class athletes that comprise the event are astonishingly powerful: A man without arms competes in archery, using his legs and feet to pull back the bow and shoot the arrow smack into the bullseye. A woman whose arms and legs were amputated competes in fencing. Another woman who lost a leg to cancer is a swimmer. A man running on prosthetic blades competes in what we can no longer call a foot race. A man in a wheelchair plays rugby, one of the most brutal contact sports in the world. The players smash into each other in what looks like high speed bumper cars. 

The Paralympics, which take place just after the Olympics in the same location, is about more than who can be the fastest, the strongest, the best. It is about reclaiming the idea of wholeness, for the athletes themselves but, more importantly, for everyone, to show differently abled people as powerful, capable. "The games are the shop window of the movement," we are told. "We are all superheroes because we have all experienced tragedy, something that didn't allow us to succeed, and that's where our strength lies. We are trying to save the world." Prince Harry, founder of the wounded warrior Invictus Games, says it is undoubtably better than the Olympics because you are watching something "you've been taught is impossible."

"Rising Phoenix" takes us to the London games in 2012, with a welcome from Stephen Hawking via his mechanical voice and billboards throughout the city cheekily thanking the just-finished Olympic games there "for the warm-up." And then comes Rio, where political and financial upheavals put the entire event at risk until almost the last minute.

In structure, this is a typical sports documentary, with a combination of up close and personal backstories to get us invested in the athletes, along with some training footage and then some breathtaking moments of competition. It is all assembled with great skill by directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui and cinematographer Will Pugh, whose most recent documentary was "McQueen." The editing and camera placement bring us into the competitive events so vividly we can almost feel the heartbeats of the athletes. One event includes a skillful use of slow motion as we hear the athlete tell us what he was thinking and then we see it again in impossibly fast real time. The bodies of the competitors are photographed to emphasize their strength, their power, and their unquestionable beauty; classical Greek-style statues modeled after the athletes frame the chapters of the film.  

"Rising Phoenix" covers some of the struggles the Paralympics has faced, including 1980, when the Soviet Union refused to host because they said there were no disabled people there and the very real risk until weeks before the games that the Rio Paralympics would not happen at all. While there is enough here for two or three films, it might have made sense to include some information about questions of eligibility, or qualifications to explain how people with different levels of disability compete in the same events. There's also more to be said here about the doping scandals that they, like the Olympics, have had to face.