Documentary Pick: The Armstrong Lie (2013)
It’s fitting that The Armstrong Lie begins with the fallen cycling icon Lance Armstrong preparing to go on Oprah to talk about the “sudden” revelation that the seven-peat Tour de France star had doped his way to victory. Alex Gibney’s documentary might have gone the same direction as the appearance of A Million Little Pieces author James Frey on Oprah after the revelation that his Winfrey-endorsed memoir contained huge swaths of fiction, by putting a spotlight on the liar and making him sit there uncomfortably as the charges are read. That’s not to say that Gibney (We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks) doesn’t want to dine on the cadaver that was once Armstrong legendary career, but he’s really quite restrained about it.
The Armstrong Lie is really three movies. The first is the one Gibney intended to make, a film called The Road Back which was to be about Armstrong’s comeback at the 2009 Tour du France. Movies two and three are about the doping, looking backward at Armstrong’s rise and the secret history of his performance enhancing use that allowed it, and looking afterward to how the whole scheme unraveled after the release of the United States Anti-Doping Agency report in 2012. The cocky chutzpah of Armstrong’s pursuit of anyone accusing him of doping in the past is played against the contrite and confessional Armstrong of today, and the viewer is left to decide whether forgiveness should be granted.
Gibney is a great prosecutor by documentary – just look at Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, and Casino Jack and the United States of Money – but The Armstrong Lie isn’t about either prosecution or persecution. Instead, Armstrong the man is portrayed like some kind of Icarus figure, the tragedy being he flew too close to the sun, and was proverbially burned by his own ego and hubris. As a result, Armstrong the Cheater isn’t an object of hate, but something more complex. You can’t pity him because you’re not 100% sure if that regret is real, but this isn’t a show trial where Armstrong is accused of stealing our hopes and dreams, either.
In relation to all the problems in the world, one cyclist taking drugs to win a bike race doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, but it is easy to understand the idea of myth, and along with that the deconstruction of a myth. Lance Armstrong built an empire on a lie, and lashed out at anyone that tried to poke holes in his own hero’s journey narrative, so it’s bizarre that in a film called The Armstrong Lie he came off considerably less than villainous. Maybe, like the great athletes that Armstrong pretended to be, human failing was his greatest weakness, and Gibney knows that’s something we all understand.