phillip_wareham

Motorcycling came late to me, but after only a couple of years it's an important part of who I am. The makers of this movie (like a lot of other bikers) seem to feel the same way. They've tried to capture it and got close. The problem is that just like a photo of great scenery never captures the way it feels to be there, and the movie adaptation of your favourite book always disappoints, that feeling is difficult to nail down in a documentary, especially as it's not the same feeling for each of us.

They did a great job of representing those for whom riding is something emotional, philosophical, and meaningful. Some of it was really touching. What it perhaps needed were some moments of comedy to provide balance; maybe some people for whom motorcycling is just about being wild or getting crazy with your buddies, who make you laugh, but that clearly isn't the voice of those who made this fillm. They love the flow state of being out on the road and the cameraderie amongst their fellow bikers.

James Fox sets the benchmark for communicating on this topic with the way that he works like a dog to find the key witnesses and put them front of the camera, and then just lets them have their say. The witnesses are numerous and diverse, and together plot out in detail what appears to have been a crash of an anomalous craft and capture of the beings that occupied it. All of the witnesses seem like ordinary, honest people with no reason to lie. In one situation there were even three witnesses who testified about what they had seen together.

Like many people who have started following this topic in the last couple of years I'm nowhere near ready to make conclusions, but the evidence that there is a core of reality to this topic is now piled pretty high.

Documentaries often stand or fall on the content. I don't really even have an opinion on how good a film this is, I just think that Tommy Caldwell is one of those people who changes your conception of what's achievable. He totally crossed the line into being obsessive about what he was doing, but so what? Pioneers are like that. Edit: just to note that I hardly ever bother to write reviews; only when a film is relatively obscure and a bit special, and I want to help it get noticed. Says it all.