Robert Hawk | Home from the Gym / 2014

body and soul

by Douglas Messerli

 

Robert Hawk and Jacob Robbins (screenplay), Robert Hawk (director) Home from the Gym / 2014 [6 minutes]

 

Why it took two writers to create a “screenplay” without dialogue and in which the central character (played by co-author Jake Robbins) simply undresses, I can’t explain. Perhaps it took someone other than US director Robert Hawk to describe what a gym costume really consists for, the hooded sweater, the open T-shirt, the heavily laced black gym boots, the difficult to pull-off sweat socks, the equally tight sweatpants, and the shorts under.

      Finally, with some struggles our strip-teaser is finished, naked, the camera eventually moving in and down even to catch a look at his penis.

       One has to wonder, is that what this film is all about?

       But then, there is the tear—actually two tears that drip slowly from his eye.

      As the reviewer on the IMDb site pondered: “Who could imagine the story? Or who reduced all that perfect body of the actor. Or who discover the bitter poetry of loneliness, a victory, a fall, or a break-up.”

     Sorry, but why should I care? Just because I’ve now seen him totally naked? That he seems to very vulnerable after he’s torn his costume—certainly every bit as complex as that of a drag queen—away from his limbs? You’d think that with two writers they’d have given us some further clue or even pretend an answer for such an after work-out melancholy.

     This might have worked far better as a photograph: a boxer all suited up and ready to punch with a tear rolling down his eye.  

 

Los Angeles, September 19, 2024 / Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).