Throughout Bing Liu’s remarkable documentary “Minding the Gap,” a tale of escapist skateboarding and crashing into adulthood, there are occasional cutaway glimpses of scuffed railings around Rockford, Illinois, the economically depressed Rust Belt city where the three young men in Liu’s sights (which include himself) grew up. Those acrobatic grinds skateboarders perform can leave marks, obviously, but then so do turbulent childhoods.
Filmed over many years, during which Liu’s longtime passion for dynamic, fluid skate cinematography morphed into assembling a “Boyhood”-esque meditation on his board-proficient subjects’ entire lives, “Minding the Gap” (premiering theatrically and on Hulu) announces a confident new voice in personal non-fiction.
What starts as a raucous celebration of youthful freedom — with an exhilarating montage of his key skaters start on a building rooftop, down the ramps of a parking garage, and into the coast-able sloped streets of Rockport — consciously expands to cover the bonds of friendship, racial identity, the hard slog of being responsible, and the generational after-effects of trauma.
We meet up with stringy-haired Zack at 23, just as he’s about to become a dad with his 21-year-old girlfriend Nina. A sometime roofing worker and party-hearty bro with a dangerous smile, he seems ill-prepared for fatherhood: rarely seen without a beer in his hand, Zack quickly buckles under the strain of shared parenting duties (made harder by off-and-on employment), allowing his relationship to Nina to descend into acrimony. What once seemed comically fun-loving about his gift-for-gab immaturity soon feels like a defensive posture hiding a boy-man with real problems.
Zack’s friend Keire, meanwhile, a kind-eyed teenager with an awkward laugh, is six years younger, and often the only black kid in a crew of white boys. Video of Keire at 11 years of age, responding to a bully by determinedly destroying the boy’s skateboard, starts to make sense when you watch him at 17 and beyond; under a camera-wielding Liu’s friendly inquiries, he talks about his father, an abusive disciplinarian whose death Keire hasn’t yet processed. Keire’s own skateboard is inscribed with the words “This device cures heartache,” which gives you some idea of how fragile his soul is as he maneuvers into first jobs, asserting his identity, and taking his future seriously.
It’s when Liu, with halting reluctance, turns the camera on himself about his brutal upbringing that the darkest binding theme of “Minding the Gap” emerges: corrosive, violent masculinity. A tour of Liu’s childhood home with his half-brother Kent reveals memories of Kent hearing Liu through the walls, screaming under his stepdad’s beatings. It’s a testament to the movie’s ultimately forgiving power that even its most raw, questionable encounter — an arranged, halting interview with Liu’s broken-looking mother Mengyne designed to put her on the spot about the monstrous man she married — ultimately bypasses any unintended vengefulness to expose the tragic thinking behind a lonely woman’s consequential decision.
Elsewhere, Liu’s focus on Nina as a young mom increasingly exasperated with Zack’s irresponsibility brings a welcome female angle to the interwoven narrative of male anxiety. By treating Nina as a figure worthy of equal attention, and eventually as someone with her own story to tell about violence, the movie achieves a rarefied sensitivity about hearing all sides, even when it comes to the filmmaker’s own role in drawing out intimacies, be they from strangers or friends.
“Minding the Gap,” which is brilliantly edited by Liu and Joshua Altman, has a floating, grab-bag style that collapses the time frame into a kind of momentum-driven arc, but while the pieces are often bite-sized, and not always delineated by a year or person’s age, the collage has a distinctive chronological feel. The growing-up may not be happening at any given time, but you can sense the passage of something, and it makes you sit up; the movie’s unseen clock seems to signify not just breakthroughs but also missed opportunities, and it makes for all kinds of emotional resonance.
It’s as if Liu is after a poetic rendering of time that keeps the footage of anarchic adolescence, and the skateboarding digressions, ever near the scenes of job drudgery, nomadic living, and, in Zack’s case, alcohol-fueled revelry that feels ever more self-destructive. And then, after a while, you find yourself watching these lives the way you would a skateboarder in full flight, cataloguing the sense of balance displayed: Will they make that move work? Will they fall? And when they do, will they smile, get up, and try again, or fling something in anger?
15 Top Grossing Documentaries at the Box Office, From 'An Inconvenient Truth' to 'Fahrenheit 9/11' (Photos)
Documentaries are rarely big money makers, but they can have the power to influence change and motivate people to action in a way narrative films cannot. So when a documentary does make a splash at the box office, it's an even bigger surprise. This list of the top-15 grossing documentaries ever is an interesting mix of political, nature and concert docs, and several of them likewise went on to win Oscars and critical acclaim. All numbers are domestic totals via Box Office Mojo.
Warner Bros./National Geographic Films/Paramount Classics
15. "They Shall Not Grow Old" (2018) - $17.9 million
Director Peter Jackson went to painstaking lengths to digitally restore and transform 100-year-old archival footage for his powerful documentary on World War I. Jackson restored color and sound to the Great War, something that was previously only known through black and white silent film. The documentary performed well in part because of a release that even transformed the footage into 3D.
Warner Bros.
14. "Oceans" (2010) - $19.4 million
You'll see a lot of Disneynature documentaries on this list. Pierce Brosnan narrates this 2010 documentary filmed across the world's oceans.
Disneynature
13. "Bowling for Columbine" (2002) - $21.5 million
Michael Moore's provocative documentary about American gun violence (and one of his best) won the Oscar for Best Documentary and broke international box office records for a documentary in 2002.
United Artists
12. "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" (2018) - $22.8 million
Morgan Neville's portrait of Fred Rogers and "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" proved to be a crowd-pleasing hit in the summer of 2018 because of the absolute niceness at its heart. Neville in his film explains that Fred Rogers was the rare person who really did not have a dark side, and in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" it shows.
Jim Judkis / Focus Features
11. "An Inconvenient Truth" (2006) - $24.1 million
Davis Guggenheim's documentary spotlighting former Vice President Al Gore's plea to alert the world to the effects of global warming and climate change went on to win two Oscars and earn a sequel.
Paramount Classics
10. "Sicko" (2007) - $24.5 million
Another Michael Moore movie to crack the list, "Sicko" was Moore's look at the healthcare industry in America compared to other nations, with Moore sailing sick veterans down to Cuba to receive the care they couldn't have had at home.
Lionsgate
9. "Katy Perry: Part of Me" (2012) - $25.3 million
This 2012 concert movie followed Katy Perry on her California Dreams World Tour.
Paramount Pictures
8. "One Direction: This Is Us" (2013) - $28.8 million
"Super Size Me" filmmaker Morgan Spurlock directed this concert doc about the then wildly popular British boy group.
TriStar
7. "Chimpanzee" (2012) - $28.9 million
Tim Allen narrated this Disneynature doc about a three-month old chimp separated from his flock and adopted by another grown male.
Disneynature
6. "Earth" (2007) - $32 million
The first of Disneynature's documentaries, "Earth" was a theatrical version of the popular "Planet Earth" miniseries from 2006. "Earth" was finally given a stateside theatrical release in 2009.
Disneynature
5. "2016: Obama's America" (2012) - $33.4 million
Dinesh D'Souza's anti-Obama documentary speculated about where the country would be if Obama won a second term in office in 2012.
Getty Images
4. "Michael Jackson's This Is It" (2009) - $72 million
The footage in "This Is It" comes from a behind-the-scenes look at preparation for Michael Jackson's 50 shows at London's O2 Arena. It wasn't originally meant to be made into a film, but it provided an intimate look at Jackson in his final days.
Getty Images
3. "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never" (2011) - $73 million
The Biebs holds the spot for the highest-grossing concert film ever and the documentary with the biggest opening weekend of all time.
Paramount Pictures
2. "March of the Penguins" (2005) - $77.4 million
People sure love penguins. Morgan Freeman narrates the nature documentary that opened on just four screens but soon spread into a nationwide hit.
National Geographic Films
1. "Fahrenheit 9/11" (2004) - $119.1 million
Michael Moore's scathing documentary about President George W. Bush and the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks is the highest-grossing documentary of all time and it isn't even close. The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Opening at over $23 million, the movie at the time opened higher than any other documentary had ever grossed in its lifetime. Moore followed up the film with a documentary about the 2016 election and Donald Trump, titled "Fahrenheit 11/9," which refers to the day after he was elected.
Miramax
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Michael Moore, Disneynature and several concert films top the list
Documentaries are rarely big money makers, but they can have the power to influence change and motivate people to action in a way narrative films cannot. So when a documentary does make a splash at the box office, it's an even bigger surprise. This list of the top-15 grossing documentaries ever is an interesting mix of political, nature and concert docs, and several of them likewise went on to win Oscars and critical acclaim. All numbers are domestic totals via Box Office Mojo.