Experts Only

Mark Obenhaus' film, Steep, has not been getting the sort of reviews that would make it a contender for best doc of the year. Sure, there's the inherent problem about making a movie about people whose first thought upon waking is that they might like to go skiing for the day. But Steep has its weighty notes, mostly concerning Doug Coombs, a pioneering ski mountaineer who was interviewed days before his death on the mountain trying to save his friend. But, at its heart, Steep is an extreme film about what happens on slopes unmarred by chair lifts and accessed by helicopter. Like any doc about a sport that does not involve winning or losing, there's a lot of pseudospiritual talk about communing with nature and facing death and all those good things, which might make your skin crawl, but you're not jumping out of a helicopter over Alaska. Back in the '80s, there were any number of films like this about surfing, always in slow motion; you'd have to watch through a haze of marijuana smoke. We don't mean anything by that. Oh, and Steep also covers an in-progress avalanche, and there's plenty of footage of Shane McConkey, the Tahoe local who skis off cliffs and then throws out a parachute, an activity that is pretty close to being the best thing in the world. Court jester Glen Plake, who belongs in every ski film, also gets his screen time.
Jan. 23-24, 2008