A few things touched me immediately about the movie. Steep begins in the Grand Teton range here in the States and ends (spiritually, at least) in the French Alps. I have distinct memories of seeing the Tetons for the first time poking up from the horizon and getting impossibly larger as we approached. Up close, the scale of these mountains doesn't seem real compared to any other natural feature I've seen in the states. Later, I can recall taking several trains from Belgium to reach the town of Chamonix in the French Alps. I grew up skiing in Vermont, but I was never comfortable above a single black diamond and not very stable even on those slopes... I picked Chamonix out of a travel book without realizing that I was heading into what is referred to in Steep as the "birthplace of Alpinism." As the train started running through the Alps, my only big-mountain reference before then instantly evaporated. The poor Tetons were flattened. A week in Chamonix didn't change my first impression; without ever strapping on skis, I managed to get into at least one scary situation, descending into Mer de Glace on a "ladder" that was basically a series of metal loops bolted into a cliff face, and I felt like I was always on the verge of danger.
Grand Teton and Chamonix bookmark several other locations for the film including Valdez, Alaska. The skiers in Steep include newcomers like Seth Morrison, Shane McConkey, and Ingrid Backstrom alongside legends like Bill Briggs, Glen Plake, and Anselme Baud. Plake ties into a film called The Blizzard of Ahhs that I heard plenty about growing up in the 80's in Vermont. I wasn't enough of a skier to really care about Blizzard of Ahhs, but it was obvious watching my friends on the slopes that our generation wasn't going to be satisfied just carving tight turns down the lift-line. Plake and others from the US were skiing in the trails of giants like Anselme by the time they stormed into Chamonix, and Steep does a nice job compressing thirty years of European, Canadian, and American skiing, so we quickly move into the 90's and the current crop of extreme skiers. Watching Morrison launch jumps that look like something Cory Yuen would choreograph, or seeing McConkey ski directly off a cliff, pull a parachute off his back, and base-jump to the bottom of the mountain, you might be lured into thinking that big-mountain skiing is about stunts and goofing around. The reality is that any skiing performed at this extreme height and with slopes at 45-degree or steeper angles is deadly serious. One of the iconic skiers featured in Steep lost his life before filming was complete. The impact of this in the movie is huge, but not in a graphic way. By the time the news hits you, it should be obvious that this is a death-defying sport where the contestants don't always defy death. Perhaps it's because these people make it all look so easy or because they're so passionate about doing it that you start to feel like extreme skiing is completely natural. One interpretation of Steep is that every one of the skiers featured is clinically insane. Another is that the skiers are tuned into a different frequency, but are fully aware of their choice and resigned to live or die in pursuit of their vision.
The special features include some great information on how Steep was created and a full interview with the skier that lost his life during the making of the film. There are some interviews from a screening of the movie that aren't terribly fun to watch due to poor sound and video quality. Considering the high quality of the movie, it's hard to understand the choice to include this material as a special feature... Stills from the production are included and highlight how making Steep was nearly as difficult and dangerous as the skiing it portrays. No matter how you feel by the end of Steep, it will move you. It's an incredibly entertaining experience, the kind of thing that most movies (fiction or non-fiction) have lost.
