In the Year of the Documentary, ‘Minding the Gap’ Stands Tall

NGL writes about Bing Liu’s triumphant entrance into the collective minds of moviegoers — rather, moviestreamers — everywhere. Fair warning: you don’t have to know how to skateboard in order to enjoy the ride

(Bing Liu / Hulu. Photo Illustration by Nathan Graber-Lipperman)

In Bing Liu’s directorial debut, the subject matter revolves around something near and dear to his heart: skateboarding.

So why did I love it so much? I’ve never done an Ollie, and I’ve never been to a skate park. I’ve tried — and failed — my hand at scootering; I’ve never come close to touching a pair of skis.

Hell, I’ve never even ridden a bike.

Yet it’s impossible to turn on the first-time filmmaker’s movie without being swept away by his irresistible, flowing style, as we glide around Liu’s hometown of Rockford, Illinois and come precipitously close to what it feels like to skateboard. It’s a nirvana, of sorts, with arresting visuals and a score to match.

And while this introductory sequence sets the tone for Minding the Gap, we’d be doing Liu a disservice to limit his documentary to something so simple. Because through the lens of its main characters, we get a complex view into a Rust Belt city fallen upon hard times and the culture of abuse that has shaped these three men’s lives forever.

Throughout the film, we follow the winding lives of our three main characters: Zack Mulligan, the 20-something-year-old who’s dealing with the responsibilities of being a first-time father; Keire Johnson, the teenager who’s just trying to find his way through life; and Bing Liu, the one behind the camera, documenting it all.

The thing that brought them together in the first place is, of course, skateboarding. Liu filmed almost everything they did when they were teenagers, all of the half-pipes, tricks, and fails along the way. He has a rich treasure chest to draw from, and therefore has the unique opportunity to pick and choose from his amateur footage when he feels like it fits into the narrative.

But Liu decided to dig deeper than that in his storytelling, starting with Zack. On first glance, Zack is your stereotypical skater bro. He’s charismatic, he’s got long, blonde hair, and he loves nothing more than to kick back and hang with the boys.

Slowly, though, we start to pick up on Zack’s upbringing, as he talks about running away from home all the time due to his parents’ strict nature and expectations. He works hard at his respective jobs — such as roofing, making sandwiches, and working at a furniture store — but it’s fleeting, always temporary, never enough to feel comfortable with his girlfriend, Nina, and their infant son. You can tell there’s some tension with this dynamic, too, when early on in the film, Zack says, “We have to grow up. And it’s gonna suck…I just wanted to skate.”

Zack does have a passion project: he’s using his background in carpentry (a trade in which his dad and grandfather made their money) to create an indoor skate park at a local gym. Even that, however, goes downhill when the owner of the gym pockets the money from the project and disappears from town one night.

Finally, though, it’s Zack’s relationship with Nina that drives a good chunk of the film. At first, the way he tells it, she’s just being difficult — “she just won’t shut the fuck up sometimes,” he says at one point in the film — and that’s why they’re constantly going through long periods in between seeing each other. But after getting Nina’s side of the story, we realize that Zack’s been physically assaulting her, and she decides to move in with her aunt.

On the other hand, Keire Johnson is the scrawny, African-American teenager who fell in love with skateboarding because he had nowhere else to turn to. Even as he became immersed in a culture where he was often the only black kid, at one point in the film, Keire puts it rather bluntly: “I could be on the verge of a mental breakdown but if I can skate, I’m fine.”

Keire Johnson and Zack Mulligan working on Mulligan’s skate park (Bing Liu / Hulu)

Liu decides to interweave Keire’s story alongside Zack’s because of the former’s relationship with his father. Earlier in the film, while grinning ear-to-ear, Keire candidly talks about his “strict” upbringing. “I got disciplined…They call it ‘child abuse’ now,” he says, before letting off a nervous laugh.

An 18-year-old at the beginning of the film, Keire trudges through life, not really sure where he want to go or what he wants to do. He works at a restaurant and still lives with his mom, who is seeing other men after Keire’s dad passed away several years ago. It’s unclear if these men have an abusive relationship towards Keire or his mom, too, though Liu hints at it ever so slightly.

But Keire will always have skateboarding. We see him fall off his board at one point; in conversation later, Liu states, “It [skateboarding] hurts you.” Keire responds, “Yeah, but so did my dad…and I loved him to death.”

Rounding out the trio is Liu himself, who rarely inserts himself into the film yet is a vital component to the story’s thread nonetheless. One of the most tense scenes in the film occurs when Liu goes back home to talk to his mom, who it’s quite clear he has an estranged relationship with.

Through interviews with his half-brother, we learn that Bing’s stepdad often beat him to the point where it could be heard from other rooms in their house. Liu’s mom never did anything about it, all the way up until the day her husband finally passed away, because she was afraid of him. It’s quite clear that the director goes to confront her on this course of action, and by the end of the interview, she breaks down in tears. “I don’t know what to say,” Liu’s mother tells him. “I wish I [could] go over, do again, do differently.”

And that’s when you realize: this film is about so much more than just skateboarding. What makes Minding the Gap so damn special is its ability to touch on the adolescent fear of growing up and the responsibilities with it, alongside the cycle of abuse that permeates throughout American culture. The latter is never fully broached head-on; no, it’s subtly alluded to throughout each of its characters’ sprawling, confusing lives.

I think the reason for this is twofold. First, I’ve read and watched interviews with all three main characters. It seems like Liu decided to document both their childhood and current lives and then go from there, deciding on how he wanted to tell the story on the fly. Therefore, he didn’t realize the angle he wanted to take with the whole thing until that one common thread between the trio’s lives became ever so apparent.

Second, the problem of abuse is often beneath the surface. It can come from people we love, like Keire with his dad; it can come from people we hate, like Liu with his stepdad; and it can come from cool, everyday people like Zack. For those of us who have never come anywhere near any form of abuse, it’s hard to put a human face on it. Minding the Gap does just that.

We’re not totally sure how much time passes over the course of the film, but as it comes to a close, Zack has moved on to Colorado, and he’s seeing a different woman. Keire decides to buy his own place and move away from his family, too. And while we’re not sure what happens to Liu — we do see him taking his mom out to dinner, seemingly making amends — the director decides to hit us with an absolute gut punch with 10 minutes left in the documentary.

Liu jumps between the climactic point of his conversation with his mom to a hopeless Zack, who’s drinking a beer while staring into the distance near a river, and a tearful Keire, who’s visiting his dad’s grave for the first time. Liu quietly but confidently confronts Zack on Nina’s allegations; after some prodding, Zack responds, “You can’t beat up women…but bitches need to get slapped sometimes. Does that make sense?”

The nice guy routine, the facade Zack keeps up, the quips and jokes that are a clear defense mechanism…it all melts away in this very moment. Simultaneously, a visibly distraught Keire stumbles around the graveyard, eventually finding his dad’s resting place. He falls to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably, partly out of sadness, partly out of happiness. This is where Liu’s prowess as a filmmaker shines through, as he elicits the type of raw emotion that’s worthy of an Academy Award from his characters.

Except this isn’t scripted. This is a documentary; these are real people with real lives. Quotes like “I can’t let myself think that the reason I have to struggle so hard…is because I fucking suck! That’s what the drinking is about…that’s what it’s all about,” show how the people on screen (in this case, Zack) are human beings with complicated emotions and problems.

You simply can’t get performances like these from a script. That’s why I think that Minding the Gap should not only win Best Documentary at this year’s Oscars, it should also be considered one of the best damn movies of 2018, period.

In the scene at the riverfront, at one point, when Zack’s thinking about his life trajectory, his choices, he suddenly blurts out, “I just want to hide…I just want to run away.”

And that’s when the film hits home the most: when it’s most relatable. Because don’t we all feel that way sometimes?

Nathan Graber-Lipperman is a cinephile who’s seen The Big Lebowski a mere 72 times. You can follow him on Twitter here.

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