Skip to content

Cookies 🍪

This site uses cookies that need consent.

Learn more

Zur Powderguide-Startseite Zur Powderguide-Startseite
movies

Movie review | NUMINOUS

Talk is silver...

by Lea Hartl • 12/29/2017
The film Numinous by Dendrite Studios, which was recently named Movie of the Year at the Powder Awards, is a silent movie. The athletes, above all Kye Petersen, who played a key role in the production, delight the viewer with their silence and appealing skiing action.

Numinous is an English word. In German it means numinous. Although I have some knowledge of German, this googled translation did not help me understand the term. I learned from Wikipedia that numinous is based on the Latin word numen. According to Wikipedia, this in turn means either hint, command, will or divine will. Apparently, numen and numinous in German are also technical terms used in religious theory to describe "the presence of a formless divine being". There was also an ancient Roman cult that dealt with the concept and was concerned with the god-like worship of the emperor Augustus in particular. Whether Augustus was shapeless or divine or both was not immediately clear to me during my superficial internet research.

Well. I interpret Numinous as the title of a ski film as a vague term somewhere between spiritual transcendence with a reference to nature and "Boah dude, mountains are so cool, yo!"

The latter is beautifully demonstrated in Numinous. The film is a declaration of love to the mountains of British Columbia, from melt-in-your-mouth pillows to jagged peaks bathed in pink evening light and steep ice walls.

The plot, if you can call it a plot in films of this genre, is: a bit of lift-related shredding in Whistler as an intro, then lots of pillow lines, a few ski tours, once as action with a large group and large camp, dropped off somewhere by a helicopter, even more pillows and in between a few uncommented nature scenes (waterfall, birds, forest, etc.), which are presumably intended to represent the shapeless divine and are reminiscent of the style of Sherpas Cinema.

As already mentioned, there are no talking protagonists, as they are usually cut between the action scenes. Instead of skiers standing on a footbridge talking about their numinous lifestyle, the shapeless divine and other profound thoughts, we only see the skiers skiing.

The action as such is spectacular, but not completely over the top. You can watch without having to be afraid (I'm thinking of La Liste as a counter-example...) and dream yourself into the lines. Perhaps because there is no talking, there is time to almost always show the complete runs from entry to exit, as well as jumps and tricks including landings. In my opinion, this is a successful trade-off.

The topic of avalanches is also dealt with more elegantly and sympathetically than is the case in many films in which someone explicitly talks about it: We see a group of athletes initially snowed in at the storm-tossed camp, then swarming out motivated on the first beautiful day in search of epic lines. The drone follows them to the potential start of a steep flank. Once at the top, it moves far enough away for us to see the large, fresh crack in this flank. The entire slope has fallen away. Shrugging our shoulders, we descend back to camp along the safe ascent route. And because we are still in the expedition camp somewhere in the middle of nowhere, the sunny day is used in a different way: With the right attitude, even pad surfing becomes an extreme sport.

The spectator takes away the fact that it doesn't always have to be the sickest line and that even fooling around with camp mates is a worthwhile pastime when the conditions don't play along.

Conclusion

Beautiful movie. Some will like the soundtrack, others won't, as always. Personally, I think the overall package is a success.

If, like me, you spent time on the TGR forum when you were young, you could follow how Athan Merrick, one of the two men behind Dendrite Studios, developed from a skier with pro ambitions to an increasingly ambitious filmmaker. That's another reason why I'm happy about this movie.

NUMINOUS is available to buy on demand via Vimeo for €8.51 and to rent for €4.25.

ℹ️PowderGuide.com is nonprofit-making, so we are glad about any support. If you like to improve our DeepL translation backend, feel free to write an email to the editors with your suggestions for better understandings. Thanks a lot in advance!

Show original (German)

Related articles

Comments