Netflix is stacked with entire world-class sports activities documentaries.
At the top of the pile is Untold, a series of immaculate options about the strangest, most unbelievable stories in sport over the earlier couple of decades. But you can find a lot more the place that came from. The Very last Dance is on Netflix. The Oscar-successful Icarus is on Netflix. You will find Athlete A, The River Runner, Terrible Activity — the checklist is endless.
But there is certainly a single documentary I almost never listen to folks wax lyrical about. And they ought to, due to the fact it’s unbelievable.
Coming in at an available 40 minutes, The Speed Cubers is a shorter, barely attribute-duration documentary about pace cubing, the act of solving various forms of Rubik’s Cubes as immediately as feasible.
Speed cubing is brain boggling. Most people today would wrestle to figure out a 3x3x3 Rubik’s Dice in hrs if challenged, but the finest can remedy them in seconds. The Speed Cubers explores this subculture, focusing on the stories of two of the world’s swiftest, the legendary Feliks Zemdegs and the new king of speed cubing, Max Park.
In some techniques, Zemdegs is the Roger Federer of Rubik’s Cubes. Irrespective of the actuality each velocity cubing file he at the time held has now been broken, he is broadly deemed the finest of all time, owning recognized up to 121 earth information and profitable the velocity cubing earth championship two times, in 2013 and 2015.
Max (left) and Feliks in The Speed Cubers.
Netflix
Zemdegs is the hero of Parks, who now, in 2022, has broken just about every single document Zemdegs as soon as held. Now 20 many years outdated, Park was diagnosed with reasonable to serious autism at the age of two. Right after his mom gave him a Rubik’s Dice to aid build his motor expertise, Parks promptly turned obsessed with fixing all distinctive forms of cubes. By way of his participation in speed cubing competitions, Max not only observed his enthusiasm, he uncovered a way to socially produce and make good good friends in the course of action.
What could have conveniently been a lavatory-normal tale about a at the time-legendary determine passing the torch in the end evolves into one thing far a lot more profound. Not only are Felix and Max friends, but Felix is a thing of a role design for Park — not just in the building art of pace cubing, but in how to take care of himself socially.
Zemdegs’ sensitive interactions with Park and his spouse and children are at the core of this documentary, and they’re beautiful to look at. Particularly as Zemdegs wrestles with the difficulties of no lengthier currently being at the apex of the interest he devoted his lifestyle to perfecting.
It is heartwarming stuff. Regardless of its brief runtime, The Velocity Cubers serves as a superb portrait of two incredibly diverse persons the two relentlessly fully commited to the very same pursuit. Outside of that, it truly is also a story about the true benefit of sport, and the connection between all those competing in opposition to 1 another. Only just one of these two extraordinary human beings can be the finest pace cuber on the earth, but in the grand plan of items, does it make a difference who? The Velocity Cubers is a tale about one of the most interesting subcultures on planet Earth, but it is really also a story about what it indicates to be a superior individual. And a good friend.
