An interesting documentary about a thrilling sport, but not necessarily a thrilling film.
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I used to ski cross-country, not downhill. My idea of a vertical challenge was the genes I was born with, and it gave me quite enough of a thrill, thank you, to be able to snowplow down a small hill without falling. And so the idea of someone trying to ski down mountains even steeper than those I climbed in Utah as a college student absolutely boggles my mind.
In this suddenly All-Things-Extreme world, this sort of skiing isn't new. Wannabe daredevils felt their jaws drop as they watched original bad boy and extreme Mohawk-wearing "ultimate" skier Glen Plake do some astonishing things on extremely steep mountains in "The Blizzard of Aahhhs" (1988), a film that many who are interviewed for this new extreme skiing documentary say was an inspiration. Many also cited Bill Briggs' inconceivable 1971 run down Grand Teton, which to the casual observer has more rock than snow. There's footage here showing each in action and on-camera, along with over a dozen more participants in this high-octane sport.
But a warning about the Blu-ray and DVD cover notes, which read, "Warning: You're about to experience the most breathtaking, exhilarating and inspirational ride of your life." Well, maybe. But to me, that implies we might see more of the skier-cam footage with Plake careening down a mountainside than we do. Director Mark Obenhaus opted to create a pretty standard documentary rather than a highlight film of extreme skiing set to music and devoid of depth. That's both good and bad.
The positive is that the footage we do get is indeed breathtaking, but as much so because of the sheer (pun intended) beauty of locations that most bipeds just don't get to see up close. We also get to meet the men and women who are so thrilled by the sport that they'd risk death every run just to do it . . . and do it again. One of the people interviewed extensively for the film--Doug Coombs--actually did die in a ski accident before "Steep" was even completed, and it's poignant to hear his wife and co-founder of Steep Skiing Camps Worldwide and Valdez Heli-Ski Guides talk about how he died doing what he loved.
The negative is that the amount of low-key segments with the skiers talking on-camera equal, if not outnumber the scenes that show them in extreme action. And the questions mostly deal with their feelings about risk and the lives that they lead, rather than their development of techniques or the steps that they took to accelerate their "game," so there's a sense of both affirmation and redundancy. It also means that a serious skier looking to make the transition to something more extreme won't find that much in the way of helpful instruction. Inspiration, maybe, but nothing to give them a hint as to how they might make that first backflip or decide when you have to extreme zig-zag on treacherous slopes and when you can cut loose and go vertical.
You don't have to ski to appreciate the rugged and beautiful scenery, much of it shot from the helicopters that take the skiers to the summit and leave them to their own devices. To film this, Obenhaus took his crew to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as well as Chamonix, France and Valdez, Alaska-all homes to extreme skiers, with the latter two places a combination of Holy Grail and initiation for extreme skiers who flock there from all over the world. There's stock footage, too, of Grand Teton. On camera, besides Coombs (who won the World Extreme Skiing Championship twice), his wife Emily, Briggs, and Plake, we see a wide range of skiers and people tangentially connected to the sport, including an early Chamonix visionary like Jean-Marc Boivin, Kim Pettrick of K2 Sports, French Alpine guide Stephane Dan, Powder Magazine's Steve Casimiro, and Lou Dawson, author of Wild Snow. The narration flows well enough, though the numerous scenes with talking heads do tend to diffuse the high-impact energy of the sport that we're shown in clips.
As I said, I'm not an avid skier, and so I'm approaching this documentary as I would any documentary, none of which usually involve subjects within my own range of knowledge and experience. There's some nice footage here, but the talking heads do tend to dominate at times, and within those interviews we see a common theme emerging but wish a sub-theme or two might also break out. We get some thrill-seeker's vicarious pleasure from skier-cam shots, but wish for more and for longer segments. Did they cost too much to include? After all, this is what Plake does for a living.
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