Boxing Gym
By Symi Rom-Rymer
Lord’s Gym, Austin, Texas:
Thwack.
Sssssss.
Clang, clang, clang.
Slapslapslapslap.
In a small, white shingled building hidden behind a Goodwill store, posters of famous fights and fighters frozen in position overlap on the walls. Worn boxing rings and masking tape-encased punching bags reign supreme.
In this atmosphere of muscles and sweat, Frederick Wiseman’s new film, Boxing Gym unfolds. Wiseman--the Jewish octogenarian filmmaker whose most recent film La Danse took us into the rarified world of professional ballet, now turns his eye to the equally athletic, if more violent, world of boxing.
Boxing Gym (now playing as part of the New York Film Festival), like many of Wiseman’s films, focuses on the minutiae of every day life. Rarely leaving the confines of Lord’s, everyone and no one is at the center of the story. Like the gym itself, the film is...