Arnold: Schwarzenegger documentary fails to ask the tough questions

What Arnold doesn’t do is peel back the layers and deliver a deeper psychological profile of the bodybuilder-turned-actor.Every great movie star is a metaphor for their era. The scuzziness of the 1970s bled into Robert De Niro’s collaborations with Martin Scorsese. The callow, End of History optimism of the 1990s was reflected in the leery smile that Leonardo DiCaprio sported early in his career.

Schwarzenegger’s movies have weathered the decades better than Reagan’s trickle-down economics. And the actor, now 75, makes for an agreeable company across the three hours of documentary series Arnold . But although he’s great fun to be around, there is also a feeling of hearing only some of the story, as Lesley Chilcott, its director, focuses on the myth of Schwarzenegger as the ultimate action hero.

She gives Schwarzenegger free rein to hold forth on his belief in manifest destiny and the drive that led him from small-town Austria to the summit of Hollywood. And from there to the highest tier of Californian politics, when he was elected governor. What Arnold doesn’t do, however, is peel back the layers and deliver a deeper psychological profile of the bodybuilder-turned-actor. What drew him, a poor kid from the ends of the earth, to become a muscle man in the first place? And why was he so determined to succeed as an actor when he had already become a millionaire in California thanks to his talent for buying and selling property?

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