Fiercely inspiring tribute to the stars of the Paralympics
If fate were less fickle, tens of millions of us around the world would be glued to our TV sets enjoying the elite sport of the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo this week. The beautifully produced documentary Rising Phoenix (Netflix) has been made for those Covidpostponed games, a celebration of the Paralympic movement and the stories of competitors and those who, over the years, have worked to have the event recognised as being as prestigious and high-achieving as its able-bodied sister event.
As it is, the film might well have even more impact as a celebration of what’s been missed than it would ever have had amid the razzamatazz of the games themselves. These stories really are extraordinary, not just inspiring and moving accounts of overcoming hurdles on and off the track, but visceral celebrations of an alternative kind of physical and mental toughness.
None are more so than that of the French long-jump champion and sprinter who opens the film, Jeanbaptiste Alaize – a survivor of the Burundian Civil War who has suffered unspeakably horrific trauma yet somehow transcended it through sport.
Every story here has heart, soul and grit. As Alaize says: “We have all lived through something that didn’t allow us to succeed.” Among them are British sprint champion Jonnie Peacock, the Russian-american multiple medal-winner Tatyana Mcfadden, Italian fencer Bebe Vio, the Chinese powerlifter Cui Zhe, Australia’s wheelchair rugby icon Ryley Batt and swimmer Ellie Cole. Around their individual stories, the eventful history of the movement itself is woven, from the founding Stoke Mandeville games organised in 1948 by the heroic Dr Ludwig Guttmann, through such low points as USSR’S refusal to host the 1980 Paralympics to the overwhelming success of London 2012 (the Duke of Sussex is among those on hand to lavish praise). And, of course, the rollercoaster near-disaster of Rio 2016.
In the end though, it isn’t the politics but the emotional heft of the individual athletes’ stories, married to the exquisitely physical visuals of directors Peter Ettedgui and Ian Bonhôte and a terrific soundtrack by British composer Daniel Pemberton, that win the day. The Paralympics may have been postponed for a year, but their flame burns brightly on in this wonderful, fiercely inspiring documentary.
Peter Scott-morgan is blessed with a rare abundance of positive mental attitude. Receiving a devastating diagnosis of motor neurone disease in 2017, he decided not to give into fate but to set about subverting it. His plan: to use his background in robotics to become a pioneer, part-human, part-machine.
That none of the necessary technology existed didn’t deter him. For two years Peter: The Human Cyborg (Channel 4) followed his quest to source new technology to replace body parts and bodily functions that the disease would steal from him, gradually locking him into a body unable to move or even speak.
The ambition was huge: a rigid, self-propelled exoskeleton, new “plumbing” to cater for nutrition and waste disposal, synthetic speech via a computer hardwired to his brain, a responsive screen avatar to replace immobile facial features. The journey took him, and us, to places where technology really was beginning to look capable of fundamentally changing humanity’s relationship with disease and physical frailty. Maybe even mortality, eventually.
But for now, the science stubbornly lagged behind the rapid progress of the disease, unable to do everything Scott-morgan hoped of it. Even so, what he achieved in two years was phenomenal. By the time we left him, in March this year, the disease had locked him in almost totally. For six months he’d been voiceless, breathing through a tube, wholly dependent on his partner of 40 years, Francis. Still, he’d just had delivered his cutting edge new “wheelchair”, complete with built-in life support, a comms computer and on-screen avatar.
“It feels like I’ve woken up on another planet,” Scott-morgan said. Or rather his new synthetic voice did – his first utterance since losing speech to a laryngectomy. “Now is not the end of anything,” he added. “This is where the fun begins.”
Disappointingly, though, that was the end of something: the film. And while it closed on this powerful note of uplift and optimism, as a viewer it left us hanging. What happened next? How did he cope during the pandemic? How did he get on with his new kit? It is a rare compliment these days to complain of a documentary being too brief. But this was an exception.
Rising Phoenix ★★★★★
Peter: The Human Cyborg ★★★★