Keswick Film Festival

Synopsis

From The Who and Tommy to White Rock and Rick Wakeman of Yes. Maylam is set to have changed sports documentaries with this film about the Winter Olympics, whilst Wakeman did the same for film scores.

This from Seeing Things Secondhand: Maylam pares down the Olympics to what makes them thrilling, the reason why every couple of years we stop doing what we do for two weeks and become curling strategists or figure skating nitpickers or speed skating enthusiasts.

Rick Wakeman, whose score for the movie is precisely the kind of kinetic music which one wants for watching young people fling themselves helter skelter over the ice. His music for ski jumping is ethereal and piercing, the combination of a man hurtling down a ramp and placing himself in opposition to the mountain in the far distance. His music for pairs' figure skating is so flowery and gentle that it almost feels like someone else's work.