Critics reviews

For a film made by a 29-year-old still coming to terms with a very rough childhood, Minding the Gap displays astonishingly mature insight as well as accomplished visual artistry.

Above and beyond a prescience toward current events that makes his first documentary one of the year’s most crucial, Bing Liu also has the distinction of being what one might call a natural filmmaker.

An uncommonly sensitive depiction of skateboarding culture, an elegy for urban, blue-collar America, and a sobering meditation on domestic violence.

The skating sequences have a surging, gliding, soaring, joyously speedy energy that offers a hypnotic whirl and rush. Those images of skating, however, are merely the background and context for the film, and the diverting thrill that they offer is crucial to the film’s substance. That substance is also the very stuff of society, and the near-at-hand intimacy gives rise to a film of vast scope and political depth.

It was a lifetime in the making—an account of the lives of skateboarding friends on the cusp of adulthood, one of whom is the movie's director-cinematographer Bing Liu. It would be impressive even without the palpable sense of connection and understanding that Liu brings to the material, but its easygoing intimacy is what puts it over the top.

In a world full of images—full of people recording themselves and their friends doing dumb shit, or documenting attractive versions of themselves—Bing’s movie stands out for the complexity of its integrity, and its ability to reveal his own experiences empathically. It’s a movie that only someone sharing in this pain could have made.

A pleasure of “Minding the Gap,” his astonishing debut feature, is to observe how skating and filmmaking flow together. As the young men get stronger, bolder and more dexterous, Mr. Liu’s camera skills keep pace, and he captures the sense of risk, freedom and creativity that makes their pastime more than just a hobby.

Largely remaining behind the camera, Liu renders himself an omniscient narrator as well as a guidance counselor and, ultimately, a ghost. Subconsciously responding to Liu's quest for distance, his friends open up to him in fashions that are startling in their intimacy and self-awareness.

A filmmaker being one of the subjects of his or her own documentary is certainly nothing new. But in Minding the Gap, director Bing Liu uses his participation to question his own role in the culture he’s documenting. He does it subtly at first, then allows the movie to transform before our eyes into something poignant, damning, even terrifying.

Liu handles the elliptical passing of time smartly, the braiding of his storylines less so, but if ever there was an instance of the triumph of feeling over technique, this is it.

It’s beautiful to watch [Zack's] friends flourish, but perhaps more relatable to see Zack accumulate baggage as he goes from mistake to mistake. Minding the Gapis an emotional story that leaves you wanting the best for everyone involved. Only time will tell if childhood baggage and adult economic struggles can be surmounted.

After learning that Zack has been abusive to his girlfriend, Liu at first hesitates to confront his friend, before finally doing so on camera. The results are crushingly dispiriting. . . . He looks with love and revulsion, and these qualities of Liu’s gaze become defining of the film’s achievement.