The movie is compelling in other ways, too. It’s thrilling for even a novice fan to watch Pearce traversing the "half-pipe"—a U-shaped, deep snow trench with twenty-two foot walls on each side—down one side and then up the other with amazing spins at the top. And then doing it again, pushing higher each time. Like all pros, he makes the incredibly difficult look easy. But behind all this we also see the long, nearly obsessive hours of practice, the careful monitoring of his food intake.
Using the backdrop of a rivalry between Pearce and the more flamboyant red-haired "Flying Tomato" Shaun White, the Oscar-nominated docum.entarian Lucy Walker had access to miles of family films and file footage. We get what we might expect and hope for from a personal sports doc: watching Kevin as a baby with his loving family, his junior dives and dumps. Of the four Pearce brothers, it was Adam who was predicted to be the star athlete in this Vermont family, but Kevin's grit won out.
And right away you know this doc will be several cuts above feel-good sports films about overcoming odds. Otherworldly images of a ghostly snowboarder alone, playing, and gravity-free as if moonwalking are poetic. In structure, too, the filmmaker is brave. Early on, she breaks the bad news tastefully, using the amateur tape. Though nothing can top the description of a snowboarding mate remembering Pearce's post-accident eye—swollen, going off in the wrong direction (and yes, he was wearing his helmet). Kevin's own determination, and the loving care of his apparently well-insured family—not all athletes are so lucky, we learn—keep him alive, and eventually get him on his feet. Yet even the rehab scenes have their own appeal, with intriguingly positioned images of medical scans of Kevin's traumatic brain injury. (The cinematographer is Nick Higgins.)
In the snowboarding footage, the crowd's adulation is palpable. The night games are particularly thrilling: the lights, the breath freezing in the air, the cheers. You get a contact high. They are exuberant young dudes, living it up on those flimsy-looking boards. If you forget how young they are, a chuckle-filled televised interview with Kevin gives some of the details of getting kicked out of Shaun's house where he was rooming. Rivalry much?
But after the accident, Shaun, who's interviewed many times in the film, gets increasingly reflective. He has had nine concussions. What has happened to Kevin may be giving him pause: through subtly edited footage of Shaun in action, it seems even some of his moves may be getting less daring.
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