If you ever come across Stanley Pleskun wandering about a parking lot or through the aisles of a Walmart, his hair in pigtails, his undersized t shirt rising high around his belly, he’s probably hoping that you suspect that he’s one of the strongest men in the world. Or, if not, that maybe you’ll at least ask. For those who do neither, then it seems it will be up to his girlfriend to set you straight as she acts as the carnival barker who will introduce him and his act. Speaking in her hesitant and not-quite-sure-if-what-she’s-saying-is-true manner, she will begin to say the words she has probably recited hundreds of times, yet never once gotten entirely right—“Ladies and gentlemen, we bring you the strongest man in the world at bending steel and metal, Staanless Steeeeel!!!”—which will bring about a smattering of applause from the audience that has come outside from their afternoon of discount shopping to congregate amongst the parked cars. They are here to see what one can do with such strength, and Pleskun will oblige by lifting trucks with his legs, or women with a single finger, or, in his signature trick, even bend pennies with a few grunts of his bare hands.
But even though he is a mountain of a man, built both high and wide with equal amounts raw muscle and beer induced flab, this will not be a documentary of a man whose enormous strength has kept him from being broken by the awfulness of life. This is the story of a man who is simply aware enough to know that the only thing he has in this life is this strength, and in trying to ensure that it doesn’t go to waste, he will use every ounce of it to wrestle iron pins, and horseshoes and whatever loose change he comes across in his pocket. Watching him struggle as he slowly bends whatever trinket his assistant has handed to him, hunching over, groaning, teeth grinding together, it becomes clear that Pleskun has no choice but to fight with these inanimate pieces of metal, since there is nothing else for him to test his superhuman strength upon, at least not without having the cops called. So as his face turns so red that we begin to fear that blood might start spitting out from his ears, and as his body begins to tremble as if what he’s twisting in his hands might possibly be electrified, watching Stanless Steel at work begins to become even an endurance test for us. And this discomfort will only increase as we realize that those who have come out to watch these public displays of his suffering are usually no more than a handful of loiterers lingering about empty parking lots, or children at birthday parties who are paying more attention to the slices of cake that they have in their laps. It seems that even when performing, Stanley Pleskun is completely alone.
From the very beginning of Zachary Levy’s documentary “Strongman”, we will be witness to the slightly leery manner in which the world views such a peculiar and out of step specimen as Stanless Steel Pleskun. It will be right there for us to see during the opening scene where we will be introduced to him while he is on the phone, attempting to rent a truck for one of his stunts. As he begins to engage the man on the other line in polite small talk, explaining what he needs such a heavy vehicle for, even divulging the meaning behind his awkward and somewhat stupid moniker, he will suddenly be hung up on, as if the details of his life sound more like a prank call than anything to be considered seriously. This will be a moment that captures the essence of this man, and it will be as good an introduction as any to what will be the many small defeats that he will suffer in the first stretch of the film, each of which he will accept with one of his sighing chuckles, as if he hopes to appear that he too is in on the joke.
But this will only be one of many distractions that Pleskun will use to keep up the airs the he is a very tough man indeed. And as much as he will sometimes drunkenly boast that he is so unnaturally strong that he is completely impervious to the harm of others, there is so much about his demeanor that will make us increasingly doubt this fact as the movie goes along. During close ups we will see that in his eyes he carries the wounded look of someone who has never fit in anywhere, and has probably never been able to figure out why. When we get a shot of someone reacting to something that he has said, it seems that they only nod along, instead of ever really showing any understanding of what it is he’s getting at. Even in the long roving scenes of Pleskun wandering about, just through the simple manner in which he moves, we will be given some notion of how poor a fit he really is in this world. Nearly aping the gait of a child who has suddenly realized it’s in a place it has never been before, yet nevertheless is always moving forward in hopes of not appearing lost, one cannot look at this man without wishing that at some point he will stop and admit to someone that he has chosen a wrong path somewhere. There is a desperate hope that, sooner rather than later, he will reach out for someone’s hand that can lead him in a better direction.
But as we come to realize that this is not likely to ever happen, something apparently in the DNA of this strongman precludes him asking for help, this will be where the movie will be able to build its currency of tension, despair and frustration in its audience. This film wants us to ache at the disconnect this man has between how he appears on the outside, and who he really is, and it can’t help but succeed when it continually refuses to look away from how wide and black the chasm between these two things really is.
The whole set up of “Strongman” is essentially to create a friction between these two contrasts in Stanley’s personality. Not only will we slowly begin to note the disparity between the strength of his exterior and the fragility of his interior, but most uncomfortable of all will be the vast gulf we will see between how Pleskun believes he is viewed, as opposed to how he is really seen. Pleskun seems completely unaware that everyone in his life, from his talent agents, to his girlfriend, to his peers in the world of strongmen, to even the audience of this movie, are constantly being given a nearly pornographic view of his gaping vulnerability. No matter how many things he can destroy in his enormous hands will ever distract us from this. This is why, as we are forced to bear witness to yet another feat of his misplaced strength, it begins to feel increasingly uncomfortable for us with every show he puts on. While he stands up on stage, struggling with whatever hunk of metal that he is slowly trying to warp somewhere inside of that violent bear hug he appears to be giving to himself, there is a feeling of complete impotence as he groans and staggers and goes cross eyed with his effort. As he sweats himself into a stupor, we can’t help but feel that nothing at all is being done to tend to the the unrelenting middle aged miseries of his life, and that they are now free to press in ever closer and completely drown him as he diverts all of his attention towards the fruitless twisting of a penny. We get the feeling that even if someone were to throw him a life preserver, instead of putting it on, his immediate instinct would be to show how quickly he could tear it in half.
As for what these terrors in his life are, while they are initially kept off screen for us to only wonder about, it will be during one remarkable scene half way through the film where we will finally see what it is that haunts this man as we watch the demon’s in Pleskun’s life suddenly materialize like a nightmare before our very eyes. What begins as a simple scene where Stanley hopes to show his girlfriend some old photographs he has come across at his childhood home, suddenly will darken as the reality of the world he both inhabits, and has clearly been infected by, slowly begins to creep into every corner of the frame. The metamorphosis of this scene will begin with the jarring, off screen sound of a blender, grinding what sounds like nuts and bolts, drowning out his voice and the memories he’s trying to share. Before Stanley can even protest to this noise though, an old shirtless man with saggy **** suddenly appears, attempting to flex his muscles. Then we will cut sharply to the image of an old woman in a bunk bed across the room, rigid with dementia, mouth agape and making snapping sounds. Then, as if stumbling in from an outtake of Deliverance, a drunken toothless beast of a man wobbles about the centre of the room, maybe dancing, maybe about to fall over, shouting what sounds like the words “Veronica Lake”. It is late at night, the moon is presumably out, and we have now been properly introduced to Pleskun’s family—mother blending, father flexing, grandmother snapping and brother bumbling. It’s a moment of sensory overload for not only the viewer, but also Pleskun as he seems overwhelmed with the noise and grotesque absurdity of his existence, and storms from the room in a flurry of cursing and barely restrained violence. It is a reality that he can do nothing to alter. He can’t twist it into a better shape, and it wouldn’t be proper to threaten it with fists. All he can do is run to another room and pretend that it isn’t there.
But like many men who have been backed into a corner, at some point a fight must take place, and this will be where Pleskun’s need to be a strongman comes into play. Unable to rise above the drudgery of his day job, the dysfunction of his family, and the increasingly hard to overlook signs that he may have problems with alcohol and other drugs, his fight with metal has become the only viable sign that he is still trying to hold his ground. This film is about this battle which takes place every time Stanless Steel is handed yet another seemingly unbendable obstacle, and how the success he believes that he achieves every time a hunk of metal relents, is completely secondary, since there can be no victories in a life like this. What he offers us as he gets on stage, and chalks his hands, and takes a deep breath before bending his bones and busting his blood vessels, is the spectacle of an internal struggle becoming manifest. There will never be enough horsehoes to twist, or coins to bend for him to ever claim victory. His fight is eternal. It is a struggle simply for the sake of a struggle. When reduced to his absolute essence, Pleskun is nothing but a man who has simply got more than his share of albatross’ slung about his neck, and the unfortunate strength to keep on carrying them wherever he may go. And it is the fact that he doesn’t simply collapse from this daily burden of his that is his most astonishing feat of all—even more so than the one he does with the penny.