Hot Docs - Ping Pong with The Record Breaker

Both Films: ****

In terms of sport, ping pong hardly ranks amongst the Top 20 of physically challenging activities. But… Maybe that’s because you’re not a senior citizen over the age of 80. For octogenarians around the world, ping pong is not just a hobby, but a lifestyle. It sharpens the mind and the reflexes, and sometimes it provides an escape. Or it provides hope. It can mean so much to people, and just generally be life affirming. And that’s the spirit that Hugh Hartford captures in his documentary simply titled Ping Pong.

The film follows about eight different ping pong players from around the world as they descend on China for the world championships of table tennis. There’s Terry, who supposedly has a week to live and seems to keep living through the magic of ping pong; German Inga lives in a home because she has dementia, but she’s as sharp as anyone half her age at the table; and Dorothy, from Australia, is officially over the century mark age-wise, but she can still take on all contenders, even abandoning her wheelchair when its game time.

There’s about 703 years of life experience between all the various players, so there’s a lot of great insight aside from just being kind of life affirming. It reminded me of Young at Heart, a doc that was released a few years ago about a group of seniors in a choir singing rock hits. It’s more than just a “aren’t old people funny” kind of thing, but you really appreciate the positive effects of ping pong on them, and how, in some cases, the sport has literally saved their lives.

The actual competition portion of Ping Pong goes by too fast, and I think that could have easily been stretched out a bit longer, and as consequence of that, I think some of the characters get more screen time than others. The build-up is very, very solid, but the competition and the denouement of the stories kind of go by without really leaving an emotional effect. But what’s surprising is that it doesn’t matter that much, because the film is funny and effecting with what it does, and it proves affirmatively that there’s life after 80.

Ping Pong is well matched with The Record Breaker, a short film about Ashrita Furman, a Queens man that holds the record for the most records in the Guinness Book of World Records. I think there’s an argument that can be made for the quality of records like walking up a mountain on stilts or cutting apples with a samurai sword, but what is unavoidable is Furman’s zest for life, and his proactive promotion of an active lifestyle. Because Furman is so giddy about being The Record Breaker, and because he’s such a complex and interesting character, this film is definitely a winner.