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When most people picture going to the latest ski film screening to get us hyped up for the season, they probably picture somewhere such as Telluride, Colorado; Lake Tahoe, California; or perhaps even Stowe, Vermont. Yet this past week, when I rolled up to the screening of Warren Miller Production’s latest film, 75, I found myself in South Orange, New Jersey. Now, New Jersey certainly isn’t known for its skiing. In fact, most people probably think skiing is next to non-existent in the Garden State. Yet, for Warren Miller’s 75th film, one of the 10 segments to be featured was centered around an up-and-coming 15-year-old whose home mountain is North America’s only indoor ski area: Big SNOW, NJ. So, after deciding to come to this screening without any preconceived notions of the film, I can say that I was pleasantly surprised. And the sold-out theater loved it.
My first thoughts before the film began as I sat in the jam-packed theater were that this film had a lot to live up to. For the 75th anniversary of the most iconic winter sports media brand, they decided to create a film seemingly dedicated to looking back and celebrating its past—hence the Celebrating 75 Years tagline. But when the lights in the theater went dark, I watched two hours of something that focused on the present while looking forward instead of staying in the past.
75 covers a lot of ground. The film features 10 completely separate and unique segments from across the globe. Starting in Austria with Freeride World Tour Champion Max Hitzig’s home mountain, we proceed to zip around between iconic but frequently featured ski destinations such as Park City, Utah; heli-skiing in Alaska; Aspen, Colorado; a nondescript area of Japan; the backcountry of British Columbia; Palisades Tahoe, California, and more. Each destination shines a light on a unique group of skiers or riders at different points in their snowsport careers, including legendary figures such as Shaun White ripping around Park City with his old-time friends, Alex Ferreira helping Cassie Sharpe get back on slopes after having a child, and Zeb Powell becoming a mentor for 15-year-old up-and-comer LJ Henriquez. All these segments and locations felt so different, giving us a taste of the diversity that skiing and snowboarding offer. Yet, as we bounced from one location to the next, I kept putting the pieces together of what this film was trying to tell us or what it would become. But when the end credits rolled, I still had no answer to that question.
Now, many ski films’ main goal is not to tell a deeper story or shed light on something bigger than just epic, rad lines with dudes having a good time with their friends. And those films have their place in ski culture and can be appreciated for what they are. But 75 is not that. You can tell that it is trying to blend styles and become something in between one of those classic ski-porn ski films and a documentary that takes a deeper look at the people within the sport and how it is evolving while also adding in a random staged segment that pays homage to the Sorcerer’s Apprentice at the end.
With so much being set out to accomplish in this film, my vision and understanding were muddied and unclear. In my mind, a lot more could be appreciated when experiencing each segment on its own, without considering everything happening before or after it. For example, around halfway through, we get a 17-minute segment of the film, which features up-and-coming 15-year-old snowboarding sensation LJ Henriquez meeting up with Zeb Powell and Salema Masekela to embark on a trip of a lifetime to Japan. This segment does a great job of allowing viewers time to get to know the characters, understand their conflicts, see and experience their struggles, and finally see them grow. Instead of just hearing what has been difficult in LJ Henriquez’s snowboarding past, we see him get to Japan and be overwhelmed by the experience and stakes. Then, throughout the trip, we see him steadily improving, both in his technical skill and maturity, which Powell passes down as a mentor. This segment truly achieved that balance of great riding with a full, built-out storyline that was missing from the other segments.
The Finland segment, showcasing urban freestyle skiing, is something every viewer will remember. It was the first time I had ever seen a ski segment dedicated to playing with the perspective of the viewers as they complete a variety of tricks. By strategically placing the camera and manipulating various backgrounds, they deceive viewers into appearing to shrink and ski through narrow window-sized passageways, hit rails on massive trees, and throw flips on inconceivably small jumps. After each trick, they would cleverly reveal how it was actually done, creating perplexing and peculiar shots that added an entirely new dimension to the film and kept viewers engaged.
Overall, I left the screening of the 75 not thinking it was terrible but rather that it just didn’t seem to know what it had set out to do. The production value was on point, as you would expect out of any high-budget ski film from the big three production companies, but with so many different things going on throughout the film, I kept asking myself the question of why. Why are we seeing this right now? Why does this relate to Warren Miller’s 75th anniversary? Why is what this person is talking about relevant to the bigger picture that is trying to be told? Why did we just see an entire homage scene at the end of the film to Sorcerer’s Apprentice? In a typical ski-porn-style film, the answer is simply: because it’s cool. But this film wasn’t trying to be that. It was trying to be something more. For that, I respect it for what it set out to accomplish and crave to see more films in a similar vein. However, I also recognize that this style has room for growth in future Warren Miller films.
75 is currently on a 100-stop North American tour. The website for the tour has all of the upcoming screenings.
