Hitman Hart - Wrestling With Shadows

While The Wrestler gets kudos as the best movie ever made on professional wrestling, Wrestling With Shadows is the best documentary ever made on the subject of professional wrestling.

The National Film Board of Canada has it streaming on their website.

It's an amazing documentary for so many reasons - not the least of which is that 10+ years later, it's hard to believe that "Montreal" is still an issue in professional wrestling, and that this more than anything else defined the careers of Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels. It's also hard to believe in 2009 that anything like the events in the documentary could ever happen again.

Bret Hart book commentary

Anonymous writes (butchery of the English language left intact):

f you don't agree with the way Bret sees things, that is a commentary the man, not the book. The greatness of the book is that it is uncompromising in telling what the view of the world was from Bret's eyes. The book is an AUTOBIOGRAPHY - not a definative historical account, and it should be viewed as such.

I don't disagree that autobiographies are inherently subjective. But to try to draw some artificial line between "the man" and "the book" is slightly ridiculous. I mean, "the man" wrote "the book." And "the book" is about "the man" who wrote it.

Yes, the greatness of the book was the hard-hitting and uncompromising way in which Bret tells his story.

The failing of the book, however, is what I noted in my original commentary on it. Bret is quick to point out the failings of others, but in the process he makes himself look foolish and immature by refusing to take responsibility for his failings.

As a person gets older, there should be some wisdom of age and experience that better informs how they used to view the world. I do not doubt that, at those particular points in time in his marriage and career, Bret Hart thought his wife was being unfair to him in their marriage. My issue was more that at this point in his life, Bret should be able to see how selfish his opinion was (or still is) and grow beyond that.

My site - in German

One of the search links that led to my site today was from Babelfish. This is what a German translation of my Bret Hart book review looks like.

Click the image to see it larger.

Ah, technology. Gotta love it.

And I have to say, "Uber Mich" has a nice ring to it.

Edmonton Journal review of Bret Hart's book

Full review is on the Journal's website.

While I enjoyed Bret's book tremendously as a gritty and detailed behind-the-scenes look at his wrestling career, I can't disagree with reviewer Ruth Myles's comment that "Hart slams others for their betrayals, real and perceived, but doesn't hold the mirror up to his own behaviour."

That's true. And it shows up most in the book when he's slamming his then-wife Julie for being cold to him at various points - whether she had jetted out from Calgary to New York or somewhere else to join him at a pay-per-view, only to go shopping during his match, or if she wasn't talking to him when he was home from a grueling road trip. Bret was very quick to point out Julie's perceived failings as a wife, but he was far less likely to admit his failings as a bad husband who was constantly cheating on his wife.

Not to mention, Julie raised their kids virtually alone as a single mother, and not once in the book do I recall Bret praising her for that - or even acknowledging that fact.

It's a shame that for all of Bret's openness in the otherwise brilliant book that he didn't open up a little more for some self-reflection on how his actions hurt his own family.