Warren Miller's Timeless Movie Review

This review comes from my Letterboxd profile, where I write movie reviews for everything I see.

My school hosted a special showing of this film because part of the film was shot in Eldora, which is actually really close to the school. It prominently features places in Nederland and Boulder and even has a face or two that most of the audience personally knows. Plus, my parents love watching Warren Miller's skiing films, and since this is the 70th film made under his name (even though he had no involvement in the production since he died in 2018), this is a pretty special one. So what did I think? This is another one of those instances where, in terms of the filmmaking, I would probably give this four stars, but in terms of my personal enjoyment of it, I would probably give it three.

This film does exactly what it wants to do well: show various skiers riding down very intense slopes, hear those skiers talk about their personal lives and why they love skiing so much, and present it all in a fun, visually-pleasing way that keeps audiences that love skiing interested. The cinematography and shots in this film are absolutely jaw-dropping at times, with gorgeous shots of mountain views, sunsets, and landscapes, and the overall presentation of the documentary is pretty good. That being said, I felt like the editing of the doc was less than spectacular. There were some very strange editing choices throughout the course of this movie. There's barely any transitions linking each place these skiers travel to, so it basically just feels like a jumbling of random things that these people decided to film. It's also very repetitive, with each section showing skiers going down the slope, playing a few pop songs in the background, and showing you what the skiers think of the slopes. Yes, that's the reason this movie exists, but I felt like it would have been more interesting to see more of the struggles that the skiers probably had to go through to even get onto the slopes or delved more into how this skiing team feels about Warren Miller's death. There's so much interesting stuff that could have been inserted in here to make the fun parts more enjoyable, but instead, it's just repeating the same structure for each sequence over and over again.

They put an intermission in this movie, which I don't understand at all. It's an hour and thirty-nine minutes long, according to iTunes. Why is an intermission necessary? There's a couple of times when the editors decide to do that thing where the camera footage plays back on itself in succession so that it looks etherial or something and it just came across as unnecessary and awkward. Even the sound mixing wasn't that great here. I'm not sure if it was the speakers at the school or the actual in-movie audio or the fact that I got distracted at some points singing some of the songs in the background (because I knew them and I do that), but there are times where the music in the background is so overwhelming that I can't hear what the people are saying. I will admit, though, that the repetitive pacing did make me zone out quite a few times, so maybe part of it was zoning out or something, I don't know, but if this documentary isn't going to keep my attention for the entire time, I don't really see the point of watching it.

Now, I have a feeling people who go to see this movie are only going for one reason: they want to see footage of people skiing some epic slopes. If that's all you're looking for, then Timeless delivers that in a well-made way that will keep you engaged with the beautiful scenery and overall funny personalities of all of the people involved. However, for me, a lot of the editing and pacing choices in this documentary were so distracting that I could never fully enjoy it. The more I think about it, the more I just think about how disappointing it was. I'm certainly never gonna go out of my way to see this thing again, but I think part of my disdain may come from the fact that I'm not interested in skiing myself. If you love skiing, I have a feeling you will really enjoy this movie. I, however, just felt there could have been a lot more elements edited into this movie to show a more interesting story instead of putting together random compilations of people skiing for an hour and a half.

Letter Grade: B