Flying through the air and swishing down the slopes comes Stams, a documentary about a boarding school in the Austrian alps for elite ski athletes. Shown in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival, director Bernhard Braunstein’s film follows the daily life of the high school age students as they combine normal teenager things of school and social life with intense training and competition. It’s interesting to watch these fresh-faced youngsters put their physical and mental selves through the ringer and have to face their bodies starting to fall apart in a way most people don’t feel until their 30s or 40s. There’s also something comedic and charming about kids barely out of puberty (many still in it) be hyperfocused about their future career.
The documentary tosses you right in, no voiceover or on-screen text to guide you. The students early on attend mass in a church. They are blessed but thrown into a kind of factory producing finely tuned young athletic bodies. The religious aspect of the ski jumpers soaring through the heavens or the downhillers careening down God’s jagged snow-covered mountains doesn’t get explored further, but the ideas of Kierkegaard and DesCartes do. “Am I my body or do I have a body, can you separate mind and body?” The kids discuss this fundamental question in class. They also study Austria’s governmental structure and get lectured about not doping.
Much of their physical training involves absorbing impact or withstanding the earth’s gravitational forces. Their muscles prepare to land or turn. They exert 80% than 100% force in a seated contraption while a coach measures them. They study video and trajectory angles of their own performances down to the half-second or degree. A young student does a test where she jumps and lands on a slanted surface while holding a barbell over her shoulders. A coach measures something, I’m not exactly sure what. She squats with the barbell, disappearing below frame. She pops back with the barbell but now is about 4 years older.
That transformation makes you feel like “okay we are going to follow this person, she is more important than the others.” But soon we find out that’s not the case. That moment might be there to tell us exactly what this movie isn’t. Braunstein has stated he “didn‘t want to use the classical hero narrative, but instead – with a precise and empathetic view – I set out to describe the everyday life of young people growing up.”
That loose narrative structure lets us see moments like two boys in their dorm room sweetly deciding where to put the drop in an EDM song. Or two girls excited to hear how it went when their friend talked to a boy about potentially being in a relationship. The setting and structure feel like a Richard Linklater Dazed and Confused style high school film could break out at any moment, but it never does.
Instead the training and recovery from injury is non-stop. The few seconds of flying down a summertime ski jump are followed by carrying one of your fellow students on your shoulders as you trek back up the steep steps to the top of the jump. Ligaments are torn for some, surgery is needed. In class they are shown what a surgery could look like.
In the final third, we see some of them compete, often ending in frustration. An unseen announcer reads off their names and countries through a loudspeaker. He takes time to thank the ambulance first aid team present on the mountain. He hopes they won’t be needed but knowing they are there gives him a sense of relief.
A new batch of very young kids shows up at the end. They get put through physical tests similar to the ones we’ve seen throughout the doc, all for the chance to put their bodies through the same rigorous training for years. Only some are chosen, and very few of those will have the amount of success they dream of.
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