Review of mountain-bike movie ROAM from The Collective, praising its awe-inspiring riding and its feeling for landscape
I’ve just seen the best biking film I can remember. It’s called ROAM and it comes from an outfit called The Collective.
I suppose you’d say it’s a mountain-biking film, though I think anyone who knows or cares about bikes should see it. It features everything from dirt-jumping, helter-skelter-downhilling and some massive gap-jumps to the grace and precision of trials riding. Locations range from mountain-bike hotspots like Moab, Utah and Vancouver’s North Shore to the wilds of Morocco and the streets of Prague.
Watching ROAM I was frequently left breathless by the skill, and often great courage, shown by the riders. But the beauty of the film is that it isn’t just a parade of macho look-what-we-can-do stunts. It also celebrates the varied and often awe-inspiring settings where the guys ride. And as a photographer myself I really appreciate the sensitivity to light and landscape that it displays, from the lichen-hung forests of Vancouver’s North Shore to the sculpted slickrock of Moab. But most of all it’s a celebration of some of the wonderful things people can do on bikes.
Buy or rent the DVD and you can also enjoy an excellent ‘Making of’ documentary, which is more like a companion film in its own right. I was fascinated to see the complicated ropeways that were used to get some of the ‘aerial’ shots, and lost in admiration of anyone who can keep pace with triple World Cup downhill champion Steve Peat on fast, twisting singletrack - with a chunky 16mm camera strapped to their helmet. I like it for its insights into the character of the riders too. It was very noticeable how riders who were supremely confident hurling themselves off 50-foot drops were a lot less so when confronted with the culture shock of a first visit to Marrakech.
Criticisms? Not many. The film does portray a relentlessly male world - are there no women riding bikes out there? And the film’s fine eye for landscape makes me want to see more from other parts of the world - the Alps, say, or Scotland. But that's's not so much a criticism as a plea for more, and I gather the team are already at work on the successor.
There’s lots more, including a fine bit of sample footage, on the Collective website.
