Movie Review: The Crash Reel

The Crash Reel
Directed by: Lucy Walker.

The Crash Reel is a different kind of sports documentary, that tells the type of sports story we do not often see in the movies. Movies prefer inspirational sports stories – stories about athletes who defy odds, come back from adversity, or overcome injuries on their way to glory. The Crash Reel is about Kevin Pearce – who heading into the 2010 Winter Olympics was a medal hopeful in Half Pipe Snowboarding – perhaps the only one who could upset the heavily favored Shaun White. But on New Year’s Eve 2009 all that changed – during a training run in Park City Utah, Kevin tried out a new trick – and landed, badly – the full force of the fall was absorbed by his head. He was knocked unconscious, and it was touch and go for a while if he would even live through his injury – but eventually he does wake up. His doctors tell him he has had a traumatic brain injury – and he should never snowboard again. His family doesn’t want him to put himself in needless danger – once you’ve had one brain injury; it’s easier to get a second. But Kevin is determined to make a comeback.

In most sports movies, we would be cheering for Kevin to get back out there and snowboard. How many times have we seen a film when a group of naysayers try and talk the hero out of going after his dream, and he ignores them – and because he does, he ends up champion. The Crash Reel is different, because in this film you root against Kevin getting back on his snowboard. The film makes it clear just how dangerous the sport has become – and how it’s even more dangerous for Kevin. One fall, and he could kill himself. Why would he want to do that?

The sport of snowboarding has encouraged athletes to push themselves harder and harder. When it started, the half pipe was 6-8 high, and now it’s well over 20 feet. Combine the height of the wall with the height of the jumps, and you’re basically falling 40 feet if you mess up. From those heights, a helmet isn’t going to do you much good. But the additional height adds excitement to the sport – excitement draws in more fans, which draws in more money. And athletes being as competitive as they are, they want to do the bigger wall – and once they perfect one jump, they need to perfect something bigger and better – which is also more dangerous. The athletes take the chance of serious injury or death because they want to do it, they want to win and also because they don’t think that they’ll be the one who falls and hurts themselves – that’s something that happens to other people, not them. You can see this in the interviews with Kevin’s friends and teammates, who seemingly say differing versions of “What happened to Kevin was horrible, but…” throughout the movie.

Snowboarding is not alone in their disregard for their athlete’s safety of course. Every sport does it to one degree or another – the NFL just had to pay out $750 million to former players who suffered serious head injuries during their careers – some former NHL players just filed a similar lawsuit. Like those sports, a certain degree of risk is pretty much essential to snowboarding – you cannot take jumps out of the sport, just like you cannot take body checks out of hockey, or violence out of football. But what degree of responsibility does the sport have to protect their athletes – even if they are only protecting them for themselves? This is the question that hangs over much of The Crash Reel.

What is amazing about the film is that director Lucy Walker is able to explore all of this, without making the film sound like a sermon. She doesn’t moralize or scold, she simply lets Kevin’s story play out as naturally as possible. It is a fascinating story in part because of Kevin’s stubborn refusal to listen to anyone about how he needs to give up his dreams of returning to the sport he loves – even as years go by and he’s no closer to being able to compete. It’s also fascinating because of Kevin’s family – who love and support him, but do not want to see him go back to snowboarding. It’s quietly heartbreaking to see Kevin’s older brother David, who has Down syndrome, please with his brother to not snowboard anymore, and Kevin refuse to listen to him. He’s still convinced he’ll be fine.

The Crash Reel is still, in its way, an inspirational sports movie. But it’s inspirational in a completely different way than most are. It’s inspirational when Kevin finally accepts what has happened to him, and how he chooses to live with it for the rest of his life, and try to get better, rather than put himself at risk again. Is there another sports movie where the most inspirational moment comes when the “hero” finally gives up?

Movie Review: Waste Land

Waste Land ***
Directed by: Lucy Walker
Featuring: Vik Muniz.

Vik Muniz grew up poor in Brazil before coming to America and making a name for himself as an artist. He is a photographer, but what he does is a little more complex than that. He takes pictures, and then uses different materials to make the picture more defined before photographing them again (for instance, for a series he did on the children of sugar cane works, he traced the pictures, and overlaid them with sugar, using the material they use to make the photograph deeper and more relevant). Wanting to give something back to the poorest people in his own country, he decides to travel to the largest dump in Rio de Janerio, and take pictures of the pickers. These are the thousands of people who spend their days going through the trash at the dump looking for recyclable materials, which they then sell by the kilo to recyclers. They remove 200 tons of garbage per day. His plan is to photograph them, and then use the very materials they pick – garbage – to make the pictures. Any proceeds he makes by selling these pictures will be given to the pickers. Waste Land, Lucy Walker’s new documentary, follows him and the pickers for two years as he goes through this process.

Waste Land is one of those documentaries that tries really hard to pull on your heart strings. I often resist these kinds of films, but in this one, I couldn’t help but get sucked in. The people that Muniz meets at the dump are completely different that what you would expect – they are hopeful, lively, and intelligent. They are simply trying to make enough money to support their families without resorting to drug dealing or prostitution – two professions it seems many in their situation fall into.

And the art itself truly is beautiful. Yes, they are photographs of garbage, but what Muniz and his team (including those same garbage pickers) do with it is truly extraordinary. I felt that the pictures themselves – the ones being sold at auction – were only a pale imitation of the massive works that they put together on the floor of huge warehouse. What they did was extraordinary.

The film does have some problems. I almost feel that a short film would have been better for this material. At 90 minutes, it runs out of steam in the last half hour, and drags toward it end. I could have done without all the scenes of liberal guilt that Muniz and his crew feel about what is going to happen to their subjects when they leave – and yet even they add something as most docs don’t ever really address this in the films themselves. Waste Land is a fine movie – an inspirational little doc about making art from garbage and trying to better the lives of people who couldn’t sink much lower than they already are.