The temptation to identify Mads Hedegaard’s agreeable documentary as the sports film of the year is close to irresistible. After all, it covers an attempt to succeed in a competitive activity over a marathon span. Rehydration is required. Diet is discussed. A support team is invaluable.
Our hero is an enigmatic, mullet-haired grandfather dubbed, yes, Kim “Cannon Arm”. His aim is to play an obscure 1980s arcade game called Gyruss for 100 straight hours on a single coin (demands of space preclude an explanation of how lavatory and nano-sleep breaks are arranged). If snooker and darts are sports then this school of extreme gaming must also meet the definition.
Like When We Kings or Hoop Dreams, Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest is, however, about a great deal more than mere sport. An underlying theme is nostalgia for the era of arcade gaming that flared briefly before the home console ate the culture alive. Kim and his friends carry much of that baggage into the 21st century. The haircut is unreconstructed. So is the music supervisor’s taste for the speedy sounds of Iron Maiden. If you are looking for Neanderthal computer graphics you have come to the right place. Even the name of Kim’s chosen hostelry, the Bip Bip Bar, onomatopoeically conjures up the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In colder hands, the documentary could have seemed patronising or plain insulting. But Hedegaard remains generous to his subjects throughout. While we work up to the great challenge, we go among Kim’s almost equally focused pals. It does not come as an enormous surprise to learn that one spends his free time analysing the sonic dynamics of JS Bach, the pure mathematician’s late-Baroque composer of choice. The knowledge that the attempt is in honour of a friend who killed himself reminds us these are damaged men with sensitivities no less tender than those of mountaineers or triathletes.
For all Hedegaard effort’s, Kim does, nonetheless, remain opaque. A surprising denouement brings us to the “game over” screen in satisfactory fashion. But Canon Arm himself is still just out of reach. You could say the same of Bjorn Borg, Bobby Jones, Don Bradman, Eusébio …
Best sports film of the year.
