☆☆☆☆½
At the beginning of the absorbing and affecting documentary Minding the Gap, I smiled at the childish antics of three skateboarding friends who seemed exactly the sort of young people who I would go out of my way to avoid in real life. They recklessly ride their skateboards through the quiet streets of Rockford, Ill., ignoring "No Trespassing" signs, damaging public property, and generally creating a nuisance. I expected the film would be some sort of loving tribute to this cavalier lifestyle.
That could well be what director Bing Liu had in mind when he started endlessly videotaping himself and his friends Keire and Zack as they furiously skated, wiped out, got up again and kept moving. Then, much in the same way we don't see life's difficult rhythms, patterns and themes except in retrospect, Minding the Gap starts forming its story.
These kids are resilient, that's something we know from their physical prowess, but it extends to their hearts and minds, too. Each one is conflicted about their circumstances in a depressed Rust Belt town, and despite their youth, already filled with regret and disappointment. Young father Zack has a wildly unpredictable and troubling relationship with his son's mother; 17-year-old Keire wants to move beyond the circumscribed boundaries of his life; while Bing ultimately puts his own mother into the picture and asks her hard questions about the decisions he made that changed his own life forever. The discoveries they make are surprising, revelatory and unexpectedly moving and graceful.
Viewed January 25, 2019 -- Hulu
That could well be what director Bing Liu had in mind when he started endlessly videotaping himself and his friends Keire and Zack as they furiously skated, wiped out, got up again and kept moving. Then, much in the same way we don't see life's difficult rhythms, patterns and themes except in retrospect, Minding the Gap starts forming its story.
These kids are resilient, that's something we know from their physical prowess, but it extends to their hearts and minds, too. Each one is conflicted about their circumstances in a depressed Rust Belt town, and despite their youth, already filled with regret and disappointment. Young father Zack has a wildly unpredictable and troubling relationship with his son's mother; 17-year-old Keire wants to move beyond the circumscribed boundaries of his life; while Bing ultimately puts his own mother into the picture and asks her hard questions about the decisions he made that changed his own life forever. The discoveries they make are surprising, revelatory and unexpectedly moving and graceful.
Viewed January 25, 2019 -- Hulu
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