"Icarus": This Year's Oscar Winner, and a Documentary Unlike Any Other
Grigory Rodchenkov and Bryan Fogel in "Icarus"/Courtesy Netflix
For me, the highlight of this year's Academy Award ceremony was the awarding of the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature to "Icarus." Timely, compelling and suspenseful, the film has something for everyone, and the fact that it's on Netflix should ensure the wide audience it deserves.
Because its subject is Russian doping in the Olympics Games, I expected "Icarus" to be a straightforward exposé in the style of most "issue" documentaries: talking heads, incriminating footage and generous voiceover analysis. Though "Icarus" has all these elements, it manages to be far more: a personal film, a sports documentary, a mystery and, ultimately, a devastating portrait of our geopolitical past, present and future.
At first the director Bryan Fogel, an elite cyclist, sets out to prove that drug testing for athletes is "bullshit." In deciding to make himself a test case for doping, he consults with Don Catlin, who founded the Olympic lab at UCLA and devised much of the drug testing that Lance Armstrong managed to beat. Says Catlin about athletes, "They're all doping. Every single one of them." He agrees to advise Fogel on his cheating regimen for the Haute Route, a 7-day bicycle race that follows the hardest section of the Tour de France. Having previously come in 14th, Fogel plans to inject himself with HGH and testosterone to boost his performance.
The phlegmatic Catlin soon bows out, fearing for his reputation. This turns out to be the best gift Fogel could have received as a filmmaker, for Catlin's replacement advisor is Grigory Rodchenko, the Russian chemist who directed the Olympic lab at Sochi and Catlin's polar opposite in personality. As charming and charismatic as Catlin is dull, Rodchenko becomes the instant star of "Icarus." His first appearance--via Skype--goes like this:
Rodchenko: What is your ultimate purpose? You would like to beat doping test? You would like to start your hormonal program? Then give sample, prove negative. Fogel: Yes. Rodchenko: Hahaha. You need a very serious advisor because there are a lot of traps.
Like a spy novel, "Icarus" hurtles along from that point on. Rodchenko smuggles Fogel's urine samples back to his lab and tests them; he passes. Fogel reaps the benefits of doping in the Haute Route until a bicycle malfunction ruins his performance; still, he evades all the drug tests. Meanwhile, Rodchenko's situation in Russia grows more perilous: fearing for his life, he enlists Fogel's help in getting out. He returns to Los Angeles and, once there, can't return: the death of his friend and boss Nikita Kamaev, the former head of Russia's anti-doping agency, of a sudden and suspicious heart attack, seals his fate as a political refugee. He reveals the methods used by Russia's FSB (Federal Security Service) in switching athletes' urine samples during the Sochi Olympics to the New York Times, is subpoenaed by a Federal grand jury, and provides the information leading to Russia's ban from this year's Winter Olympics.
Like the view in a kaleidoscope, "Icarus" begins as a small and intricate pattern, then morphs and expands in countless fascinating ways. If you haven't already seen it, you should.