Beyond Sport and Geography – Workout Around the World

Workout around the world is a short film by Elena M. starring Devan Rajkumar in the leading role who traverses the globe and engages in workouts in different locations, state of mind, and the presence of many others. The film narrative structure uses jump cuts to take us from one scene to another, showcasing how he and other inhabitants of this world engage in sport and what they get out of it. There is no limit where the camera goes and the subject it chooses; it seems the camera has total freedom despite the shoot selections. The film seems experimental and shot with a hand-held camera too- nothing aesthetically sophisticated.

Workout around the world beginning evokes a comedy with music that seems to show the entertainment side of the sport. There are scenes of strenuous activity, but the camera shows more that sport can be demanding but fun and uplifting. The scenes are aptly selected from the outset to show the collective and diverse range of workouts possible by those amateurs and professionals. Coaching and having a fitness partner are the early highlights too. Also, having a pet and involving it in the physical activity is not ignored either. The workouts do not seem to know any age limits, with youngsters playing with the rope. Space and geography are both delimited with gym, sidewalk, soccer pitch, mountain hills, beach, and cuts to the plane’s wing that shows the journey. In the second half, the audience is taken in to see the world in less than 20 minutes- India, Nepal, Canada, Maldive, Montreal, Venezuela…

The interpretation of the film can focus on its narrative style and what it depicts. On a positive note, the film presents that as each of us is unique subjects with different abilities and interests, there is as many workouts option in each locale. It also presents how sports and workouts are tied to other human daily activities. The main protagonist loves eating, especially right after a hard drill. The social commentary of the space and consumption aside, the film depicts the interwoven nature of sport and its unique universality. This aspect is once again reinforced in a scene as we see the subjects dancing, and this is their workouts. They love the activity and dance and the energies it gives them. On the negative side, the critic may point to the number of edits that make the viewers perplexed and hard to follow the whole narrative. One can even ask why is he traveling to all these spots in the first place? Does not traveling demands a different type of leisure, which is very different from the early first ten minutes of the film, which seems to be focused more on the types of workouts. The narrative split could be a point of confusion for some viewers in that sense.

Can Workout around the world teaches us something or have some cinematic takeaways? It could show that as there is a single sky under which we live, there could be a single activity that we as a human collective can partake and enjoy, albeit under different formats. The other point is that workouts are part of our daily lives, not disconnected from where we live and whom we interact. The camera and director’s vision was to bombard us with the iteration of the same issue, partly personalized but accessible to us all. In sum, the documentary uses no interview, voiceover, archival footage and chronology; it is not expository, performative; but it merely observes and uses montage effectively to reveal a slice of the reality currently squeezed in COVID-19 zeitgeist.

Grade: B-