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Pilou Bazin is a Parkour Instructor at Primal Fitness. He's originally from France, and has been
training at Primal for about 2 years. Pilou has translated several APK articles into French as part of our Translation Initiative, and he offered to read and review the new David Belle book! Unfortunately he can't translate it all for us, but read more for a solid review of the book's contents!
Being originally French, I got curious about the newly released "Parkour" book by David Belle, and ordered it online (decitre.fr ships it to the US, just add the book's price for shipping). When I received the thing, it was a small (150 pages) booklet, clearly ghostwritten (which, to its credit, is unambiguously stated in the book, and the writer is identified and thanked), with no photos (with a single exception, a dedicace to Raymond Belle), no secret diagram of how Parkour works, just a series of simple questions triggering one-page answers oredered into a progression of topics. On top of that, the book release was coordinated with the latest David Belle movie, Banlieue 13 - ultimatum.
To say the least, I was not extremely enthusiastic, fearing this to be a hyped-up cheap biopic: "David Belle, who are you ?"... well, I must admit the book answers that pretty well. Through the story, you get close and personal with the subject, his views, his light and dark sides and most importantly his story. If you have a decent knowledge of French, this is worth giving it a try (the style is rather simple and direct, and there's not too many foreign socio-cultural references).
If you're not a master of this beautiful language, here's my take on it (I'll try to remain general, but there might be some spoilers here). The first and most important thing I get from this book is learning David Belle's story, and how he perceives the creation of Parkour. His main message, I think, is that Parkour has been created by his father Raymond Belle, as a path for survival. Raymond Belle grew up in Vietnam at the begining of the Vietnam wars, and got through a lot of terrible experiences very early on. As a 7 year old boy, he found himself in a camp training war orphans into the next generation of warriors. To survive in that harsh community, he started training endlessly to be ready for anything and everything on his own, going over obstacle courses, in the jungle, etc while the other kids would rest. After the war, Raymond Belle would eventually join the corps of Paris firemen where he showed an impressive mastery of physical prowess and a readiness to jump into any situation without thinking twice. So to David Belle, this is really his father's experience, and the relationship he built with him that was at the origin of Parkour. This explains his insistance that Parkour is an utilitarian discipline, geared toward efficiency; his reluctance to let others who do not and cannot relate directly to his story make Parkour theirs or change it; his disdain for overly spectacular and media-oriented acrobatics.
His character also emerges from the pages, someone quite complex with many facets that don't necessarily fit perfectly together. I won't elaborate on that, as it's difficult to do it justice just from my own experience of reading the book. He talks about many aspects, from his obsessive training as a teenager to the acting career he is now developping, describes a lot of Parkour's "history", how he lived it. Absent from the book, though, are his views about training, teaching and learning Parkour beyond a few tips or general thoughts about tenacity, focus, the proper use of flips, the dangers of filming, etc. Partly, this goes back to his very personal view and experience of Parkour, and to the fact that even if he is the creator of the discipline, he is not really interested in passing it on in a "martial arts" way, rather encouraging everyone to understand his vision as a whole and to buid their own path on his and his father's steps.
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