Lives Of The Artists

Lives Of The Artists was shown in London’s Shoreditch Town Hall, a suitably grand venue, which was turned into a makeshift bar and theatre for the evening, and you can now see the full film online at http://www.relentlessenergy.com/

The documentary is, arguably, a move towards giving Relentless a far more sophisticated hue than all bluster – all shouty rivals Red Bull; a three-pronged insight into music, big wave surfing and freeride snowboarding, using Gallows, Fergal Smith and Tom Lowe, and Xavier De Le Rue, respectively, as their subjects.

It’s an ambitious project, shot across Greenland, America and Tahiti, to follow the artists as they tour, take on one of the world’s biggest and most dangerous waves, and snowboard vertical slopes that don’t peter out but simply drop into the ocean. But 90 minutes long at times it fails to engage, leaving you on a frustrating rollercoaster of highs and lows. The major kudos immediately belongs to the cameramen who gamely risk avalanches, being smashed onto reefs or moshed on by angry young men to capture their footage, leaving the artists pulling out the stops to keep up with their fearlessness.

Xavier De La Rue, as portrayed here, is passionate about his sport but his storytelling is confined to behind a desk when he’s not jumping out of helicopters which makes for slow viewing, and while it’s refreshing to do a film about extreme lifestyles without a Zane Lowe high voltage style voiceover, it demands that your subjects are completely compelling in stillness as well as action. It’s Fergal and Tom who click most with the filmmakers; charming, clean limbed and tousle-haired thrillseekers who bare their wounds and the possibility of being killed chasing the waves with a good natured humour offset by a captivating faraway look in their eyes, dreaming not of cameras and clapperboards but getting back on their boards the moment they’re done.

The scope for truly getting under the skin of these three disciplines is enormous but by cramming them together in one uber-doco much is lost to the back story of each subject when it would have been far more prudent to forgo history and simply plunge heart deep into the here and now. In an attempt to try and understand the artist, the fuel that fires each becomes understated instead of balanced; an avalanche is shot with detachment, the wipe-outs not nearly enough wincingly upfront, the cultural scene that follows the Gallows under-explored.

That said, much of the photography work is beautiful – island life, American dustbowl towns, frozen beauty – and the fluid portrait work is undeniably impressive, soundtracked by a score of orchestra and choir. This generates a widescreen moodiness and absolutely demands long slo-motion shots which are stunning but also pull the action back too far. This dreamy score also struggles to fit alongside certain montages – Greenland’s epic glaciers is perfect for string sections, the notoriously grotty Warp tour is not – highlighting the fragmented links between boarders and musicians.

It’s without a doubt that Lives of the Artists’ makers chose the band for their dogged opinions and live ferocity, and they do their best to elegantly capture the sweat and energy as they play show after show but Gallows make for strained viewing. In the name of doco-making this is prime material, but you wonder if this is what they had envisaged.

Their main theme here is that they have little time left as a band, only it’s not with the kind of imploding punk spirit you’d expect nor the romantic bittersweet stroppage of The Smiths but a uncomfortably cringey Metallica-in-therapy manner. Frank Carter might continually cry wolf about leaving but to see his bandmates hung out to dry in melancholic limbo is to want to give Carter a shake and ask, ‘why did you agree to be a frontman then, you plank?’  Which is exactly what the doco-makers should pursue until he is on the floor sobbing an apology to his harried foot soldiers and quitting on the spot.

Ultimately the result is a sense of merely the tip of the iceberg (Gallows could have filled it alone), but if another Lives of the Artists can dig into their artists’ minds far deeper alongside capturing them at their unawares this will see them create something absolutely fucking bonkers brilliant. Camera work is half the job and they’ve scored a near enough home-run here, but more nitty gritty, please. We know why people decide to risk life and limb for their art, what we want to know who they are under those reasons.