Get on Your Bike – Or Better Still, Cycling and Cinema By Lars Kristensen of-the-mill film that comes out of the ‘woodish’ industries: Bollywood, Hollywood or Nollywood – national heroism as escapist melodramatic cinema.
I recently found myself on a sunny afternoon in St Andrews with a hangover. To numb the feeling of the booze from the night before I went to a matinee at the New Picture House, more popularly known as the NPH. The important thing is not the object of the film, but the pleasure of the darkness provided by the cinema. On that particular day I picked one out of the usual line of popular titles offered by a well-meaning cinema manager who attempts to cater for the broader public taste (suffices to say the NPH is not the GFT or the Filmhouse). Despite the popular fare I was the only person at the screening. My choice was based purely on the title, The Flying Scotsman and its poster, a black-silhouetted cyclist climbing a hill superimposed on a soft coloured sky. This was the spirited story of Graeme Obree, who fought childhood bullying, depressions and international officials of the World Cycling Union to break the one-hour time trial and win Olympic medals in individual pursuit – a feat cherished by the nation who slowly warm to their surprising cycling hero. I enjoyed the film – or at least I had a tear in my eye at the end. Was it because I am a selfadopted Scottish national? Could it simply be because I am a fan of cycling (on moving images and not as a practitioner)? Or because I am getting old(er), more emotional and more fragile – in line with aging critic Mark Kermode1 – and thus more perceptive to poignant melodramas (it has happened before when watching Bollywood films). The Flying Scotsman could have been a run-
99 the drouth
My aim here is not to debunk the film in the manner of The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw’s ‘the sinking Scotsman.’2 Rather, I’d like to explore the film’s relationship with other cycling films, both fiction and documentary, and its connection to the man vs. machine conundrum shared by both bike racing and filmmaking. This journey of cycling and cinema will take us to Sheffield, Berlin, Rome (for obvious reasons), Beijing, and the US Midwest. In addition, before returning home (with/to The Flying Scotsman), the Danish cycling films of Jørgen Leth will be dealt with, making this journey not exhaustive but personal and clandestine.
Since my visit to the NPH that summer day, I have learnt that it took 12 years to bring the Obree story to the screen. Simon Rose wrote the first draft in 1994 and since then the film experienced several re-writes, inept producers (according to Rose) and a company meltdown, only to be saved for the finish line by Sara Giles, who had money invested in the project.3 The healthy state of Scottish cinema has enjoyed some attention lately, in for example Jonathan Murray’s chapter in The Cinema of Small Nations or Emily Munro’s recent article in The Drouth
(issue 24).4 Both writers celebrate Red Road (Andrea Arnold, 2006) as a film that could be the light at the end of the dark tunnel, in which (they argue) Scottish cinema finds itself. With Red Road we are introduced to Dogme95 principles (low-budget, narrative above style, etc.) and the transnational cinematic connection between Denmark and Scotland, which I will return to later. The Flying Scotsman seems excluded from discussions about Scottish cinema, although it is also a transnational co-production. On one hand, we have Red Road, an experimental product of transnational co-operation and viewed as a template for the future of Scottish cinema, on the other The Flying Scotsman, a film which to the critics’ pens is unworthy of the ‘Scottish cinema’ brand. The Flying Scotsman shows that making quick, popular films is not a strength of Scottish cinema. And maybe that is fine, because the audiences for such films are limited. UK figures show that Red Road was far more cherished than The Flying Scotsman: Red Road had a longer run and subsequently made more gross income.5 National audiences did not go to the cinema to see the homegrown Graeme Obree movie, but if we compare the gross income of Red Road and The Flying Scotsman on the US market, then according to IMDb the two have an equal share of the market with an intake of around $150,000. This is a small share of such a large market – but what is interesting is that Red Road opened on seven screens and ran for three months, while The Flying Scotsman opened on 100 screens, but only ran for two weeks. This suggests that the two films target different audiences, The Flying Scotsman appealing more widely than Red Road. Red Road did a lot better on the European market, tapping into art-house audiences, while The Flying Scotsman has an advantage in television and DVD sales because it appeals more widely. Critically, one is cherished over the other, although there is a place for both films in the cinema market, which is why The Flying Scotsman should be incorporated into critical discussions of Scottish cinema.
Cycling has all the features of being a beautiful sport on screen and at the same time all the possibilities of a sport gone wrong (onscreen or not). Cycling enthusiasts know this from painful viewing of the last 10 odd years of Tour de France, where every year brings new scandals of blood doping and performance enhancing drugs. There is a real danger of a spectacular fall from grace by national heroes. Lance Armstrong, Marco Pantani, Bjarne Riis, Jan Ullrich and Floyd Landis have all been accused of using EPO. While some are still defying these accusations (Armstrong, Ullrich, Landis), others have admitted (Riis) or overdosed (Pantani). In last year’s bike race around France the winner also had to stave off questions of purity and legality of winning. At one time the leading rider was withdrawn mid-race because of questions raised of his prerace whereabouts, and the pre-race favourite rider, Kazakh Alexander Vinokourov of team Astana,6 was thrown out of the race because of blood doping.Vinokourov performed the same act as Floyd Landis the previous year by being down-and-out on a mountain stage, only to ride outstandingly the next day (with a fresh blood infusion, it has to be said). The act of being down-and-out one day and flying the next is similar to Graeme Obree’s record-breaking ride at Vikingskipet in Norway, where he broke the record less than 24 hours after having missed the target. Can we with certainty say that Obree was drug-free? The story of Graeme Obree does not directly connect to the Tour de France and EPO. Hence, the adaptation of Obree’s biography would seem a safer bet on a pure (national) hero who does not fall easily from his pedestal. But it can take so little to pull him down. Reading his biography, Obree strikes me as a formidable person who has experienced mental battles against his own sense of inferiority besides his physical battles on the bike. Social exclusion, reckless business plans, stigmas of being a criminal and alcoholism have followed Graeme Obree both on and off the tracks. Cycling became for Obree the ultimate escape from the (Scottish?) world he felt loathed
the drouth 100
him. On the bike, Obree could cycle so fast that nobody noticed him or managed to get a hold on him for a chat or, more seriously, for a fight. Graeme Obree is cinema material because of his achievements and personal internal struggles, but also because bike racing, at least in my opinion, has epic proportions. There is something rare and exceptional to the symbolism of cinema and bicycles. The two wheels of the bike resemble the two spools in the camera. The bike only has this visual affinity of the camera when upside down, but, on the other hand, the camera also only records events in a negative format. What I am getting at is that the wheels and spools run in the same direction, and with a speed that is comparable. The two forms mirror each other. The bicycle on film helps the moving camera to imitate its own speed and hence move it closer to its natural (pure) format in catching the ‘real’ or its ‘truth’. Moreover, the bike anchors the cinematic production within the national context, but without loosing track of the transnational border crossing. The speed and comfort of the bike limit its representation to skirt the parameters of a defined area, be it a nation or a city. In case of the latter, Ridley Scott’s short Boy and Bicycle (1965) is a good example of how the boundaries of the city (Sheffield) are examined while on the bike. The opening of Bertolt Brecht’s Kuhle Wampe (1932) is another example of the utility of the bike in capturing a frenetic hunt for work in Weimar Berlin. In Kuhle Wampe we find the first alignment of bike and man. By framing a character through the spinning wheel of a hanging bike, the film suggests that the human lifecycle is as transparent as the spokes of the wheel, but also as fragile (the character commits suicide shortly afterwards).7 Referencing Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette, 1948) is unavoidable here, but in De Sica’s film the bike is absent, representing the lost ability to work that facilitates the fall of the protagonist. Bicycle Thieves has led to numerous spin offs in cinema. The latest on this account is the Chinese film, Beijing Bicycle (Shiqi sui de dan che, Xiaoshuai Wang, 2001). In Beijing Bicycle, the hero’s bike, and subsequently his living bread, gets stolen. He is a poor country boy who has recently moved to Beijing, working for a bike delivery company.8 Where in De Sica’s film the bike was omitted for most of the film, in Wang’s interpretation the plot follows the bike and the young school boy who purchases the stolen bike to meet the demands of his friend. The paradoxes of the bicycle are explored more explicitly: toy/work, child/adult, working
101 the drouth
class/middle class. A recurrent motif of the film is the rider’s ability to hold his balance on the bike while not in motion – one can only stay upright when in motion, similar to the moving images that are only possible when the spools are rolling. Several characters in Beijing Bicycle try to uphold the balance on the bike without moving, oft-interpreted as an allegory of China trying to uphold a balance between the old communist regime and the new capitalist era. Beijing Bicycle points to emerging class differences in China, where cars are the desired status symbol and bicycles a thing of the past, or at least are changing from transportation tool to leisure gadget. The leisure connotation of the bike is more familiar to Western societies, although here the bike is increasingly seen as an environmentally friendly modern city vehicle in the fight against global warming and combating poor health. In this view, cycle enthusiasts often describe themselves as rebels, counter culture, or critical mass.9 Here the bike is viewed as democratic, something that all can do; and indeed something all should do.10 Maybe I am digressing from The Flying Scotsman, but it is important to set these ‘alternative culture’ connotations, which are viewed as postnational, ie. global and cosmopolitan, which sets The Flying Scotsman apart from other extreme sports films that dwell on the BMX vert-ramp biking or on adrenalin pumping mountain bike racing.11 While the extreme sport films are global and have postnational viewer strategies, the professional bike-rider films have a solid foundation in the national, as with The Flying Scotsman. To adapt Obree’s biography to the screen the scriptwriters had to boost the national element, his Scottishness, and downscale the transnational element of international competition. In his biography Obree is quite negative towards his fellow countrymen and places a lot of emphasis on celebrations abroad while the home crowd is silent. On finding a sponsor he says: I had a feeling that I would get a response from England rather than Scotland, because Scottish companies – and Scots in general – tend to be negative about other Scots’ ability to achieve.12 This attitude is omitted from the screen version – instead Scottish characters are invented or foreign (English) characters are given Scottish nationality, all with the aim of narrating a pure national epic story. When Obree became the World champion in individual pursuit in 1993, he joined the international cycling circuit, which
brought welcome funds to the suffering athlete who spent long spells on the dole reliant on income from his wife or handouts from friends and family. Suddenly, he is recognised as a star – but still only abroad. The film has the world champion arriving in a foreign (German) city to mass celebration (part of the reason for the transnational production values of the film, co-produced with Filmstiftung NordrheinWestfalen). As a national epic, the transnational aspect is dwelt upon less than the subsequent depressions Obree experiences when returning to his native Scotland. By highlighting Obree’s stardom abroad the film acknowledges, in the same way as the national bike race, that it is the national that comes first. No more evident is this than in the US cycle films, Breaking Away (Peter Yates, 1979) and American Flyers (John Badham, 1985). In the former, the local teenage hero embraces the foreign Italian team, whose riders he admires, but the Italians play dirty tricks on the naïve teenager and he has to re-examine his childhood admiration, ie. grow up, which means not pretending to be Italian, making up with his father and accepting a patriarchal (national) version of history.13 National parameters are slightly altered in documentaries on bike racing. While on the one hand being concerned with a particular national rider or team, documentaries are acutely aware that the setting of the race is transnational/international, ie. national borders are crossed. In this regard, I am thinking of the films of Jørgen Leth from the 70s. In The Stars and the Water Carriers (Stjernerne og vandbærerne, 1974) Leth documents Giro d’Italia and in A Sunday in Hell (En forårsdag i helvede, 1976) the one-day race Paris-Roubaix. In the latter, although a one-day race and very much a French race, Paris-Roubaix skirts the parameter of national boundaries by finishing in Roubaix near the border to Belgium. The aim of Jørgen Leth in these films is to infuse mythological/epic proportions (heroism, suffering, downfall, etc.) into bike racing without loosing sight of the commercial imperatives that facilitate the race: the advertisements, merchandise, the spectator’s consumption thereof, the construction of the teams and the economy (physical and monetary) of the riders. Leth
narrates the race into these frames of the epic struggle and economic interest in such a fashion that the society of the race and riders resemble the society in which the race occurs. It is through these films that I have been raised (or indoctrinated) to like cycling on film. The Stars and the Water Carriers stands as a particularly memorable experience for me.14 Recently re-watching The Stars and the Water Carriers, I was struck by one scene in particular where the Danish rider (the national anchor), Ole Ritter, prepares for the time trial. The preparation of the rider is intersected in a montage sequence with the mechanic’s preparation of his bike. While the rider eats his meal alone to refuel mentally and physically, the mechanic cleans the crank axle of the bike, degreasing the gears. This montage is illustrative of the man/machine theme introduced throughout this ‘test of truth’ sequence that is the time trial in bike racing. The film makes direct links between the organs of the rider and the organs of the bike, they are two and separated – but equal. The heart of the bike, the crank axle, and the heart of the rider, both need careful attention before the time trial.15 The crank axle is the heart because it is here the transfer of energy from man to machine happens. Thus, it is the hidden organs that are elevated into myth and therefore can be narrated in similar terms. Why highlight the narration of ‘the test of truth’ sequence in connection with The Flying Scotsman? Firstly, because it was exactly the crank axle – the heart of the bike – that Graeme Obree revolutionised with his construction of the ‘Old Faithful’ bike by using washing machine parts to make the riding position more aerodynamic. Secondly, because The Flying Scotsman fails to connect these man/machine dynamics, and thus ultimately fails to narrate a story of mythical dimensions. The Flying Scotsman is happy to stay on the level of mad (Scottish) genius. In accordance to conventions of popular film genres, Obree prevails in the end and the mad (Scottish) genius is vindicated as he breaks the record and this image is re-enforced and recognised by the audience.
the drouth 102
I vividly remember my five-year-old daughter coming home from her primary one class, asking her parents: ‘Who invented the bicycle?’ And when the adults (ignorant foreigners …) did not have the answer, the proud girl said: ‘Kirkpatrick Macmillan.’ Which reminded me of my first trip to the Soviet Union, where I was told that they had invented television. It is a short distance from the indoctrination of the socialist state which the primary one class children compulsorily endures from the age of five to six. Kirkpatrick Macmillan resembles very well the mad Scotsman, 16 which the dramatisation of Obree clings on to, and The Flying Scotsman counts heavily upon these recognisable stereotypes without digging under their surface. By relying on cinematic conventions, the filmmakers of The Flying Scotsman prefer letting the image be governed by the story, refusing to chase the image of ‘truth’; the moment were the ‘real’ is uncovered. The search for the ‘real’ takes us back to the filmmaking of Jørgen Leth and to Dogme95: two entities brought together in Lars von Trier’s The Five Obstructions (De fem benspænd, 2003). In the fourth obstruction, Leth comments on his filmmaking: That is the inclination (lysten): I isolate places and things that I want to examine precisely. That is the method. I frame them precisely. And … waiting for the right moment … Waiting and observing. In this sense, Leth is a filmmaker focused on the ‘right’ moment of observation. In a bike race, Leth is bound to get that moment of truth; the moment that defines both bike race and film. Cycling races have these moments that are decisive for the outcome, of either hero or failure, and in particular longer races with multiple stages, like Tour de France, where a particular mountain stage can make or break a
103 the drouth
rider. It is this search for the moment of the ‘real’ that leads to Lars von Trier and Dogme95. Dogme95’s ‘Vow of Chastity’ says: ‘My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings.’17 In a documentary on Dogme95, The Purified (De Lutrede, 2002), the grand master, puppeteer and spiritual father of the revival of Danish cinema in the 90s, Mogens Rukov, is more explicit. He says: The Dogma rules say nothing about [the moment of truth]. The rules just say that ‘the instant’ must be given greater attention. […] In The Idiots, the porn models don’t do anything wrong, but the scene isn’t treated as if it were real. The curiosity of the scene – is not curiosity about something that really happens. Here there is an additional breach of the rule that the moment must be real […] I can see it; I sense it. It is very obvious that everything is different there. It is hidden. The framework of the porn models is hidden, because they pretend to act as if it was real. The search (curiosity) for/of the ‘real’ is lost. Contrary to this, by exposing the mythic heart of the bike and by giving it an equal part of the ‘test of truth’ narrative, Jørgen Leth gets close to the ‘real’ in the man and machine sequence. The Flying Scotsman is happy to stay hidden in its narration of Obree (man) and his Old Faithful (machine) by playing into the mad Scotsman recognition, acting as if this is the ‘real’. This is probably where the terms are different between The Flying Scotsman and Red Road. Where Red Road is constructed out of a Dogme95 principle, which aims to force the moment of truth to reveal itself by driving the characters to their limits, The Flying Scotsman is far less concerned with searching for the moment of the ‘real’ in the Obree story. Instead The Flying Scotsman wants to evoke an emotional response from its viewers without them having to ponder on the ‘reality’ of Obree’s actions. In this way, the film fulfils its obligations, and judging by my tear at
the end of the film, does so effectively. At least, according to the confessions of a self-adopted cycle-cinephilic Scot, mighty pleased with the emotional (national) tears despite seeing many golden opportunities being missed in the man and bicycle narrative. Not to mention curing (national?) hangovers, further helped by a walk on that same St Andrews beach where Douglas Mackinnon read The Flying Scotsman script for the first time.18 Some seven years earlier. (Endnotes) 1 Kermode says, The Flying Scotsman is ‘an unapologetically old-fashioned tale of an outsider’s triumph over inner demons; this is often moving and occasionally stirring stuff, not as innovative or complex as its subject, perhaps, but thoroughly decent in both intent and execution’ (Mark Kermode. The Observer. 1 July 2007). The title of this essay is partly stolen from Kermode’s review. 2 Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, Friday 29 June 2007. 3 Simon Rose wrote about his trials in The Telegraph before the film’s first screening at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2006 (Simon Rose. The Telegraph. 11 August 2006). 4 The Cinema of Small Nations is edited by Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie, University of Edinburgh Press, 2007. Another good writing in this regard is Ian Goode’s article in the web journal Portal, which through recent Scottish films dwells on Scottish cinema’s connection to Europe (Portal,Vol. 4, No. 2, July 2007). 5 I refer to figures obtained from the UK Film Council’s website. This notion is not based on the fact that I was the only person in the cinema watching The Flying Scotsman, which would be a gross simplification of Scottish cinema goers. Other places than St Andrews might have had better attendance at the film. 6 The cycle-team Astana also had the official backing of the Kazakh government; the team’s chairman of the board was the Minister of Defence. In terms of cinema, the Kazakhstan government has recently thrown itself behind a national film project. Nomad (Ivan Passer/Sergei Bodrov, 2005) tells about the birth of the Kazakh nation and was backed by the president of Kazakhstan, who was cited both at the beginning and the end of the film. Needless to say that Nomad is strikingly different from Borat (2006) in regard to representation of the Central Asian nation. 7 Seeing a human life through the spinning wheel of a bike is also a feature of the Russian 12 (2007) by Nikita Mikhalkov, where the murder accused Chechen teenager is reassessing his childhood through a dream (12 is a remake of Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men from 1957). 8 In The Flying Scotsman, Obree also works as a Glaswegian bike delivery boy. This is one of the inserted fictive elements anchoring the film to its Scottish setting. 9 Queer cinema also has the fascination of the bicycle race, eg. The Unknown Cyclist (Bernard Salzman, 1998), which features a gay bike race in California. 10 For example, immigrants to Sweden are offered courses in cycling, because, as the ideology goes, everybody should be liberated by riding a bike. For refugees who have travelled thousand of miles to live in safety from war, torture and oppression, the freedom of movement is paradoxically provided through the learning to cycle. 11 The film Klunkerz (Billy Savage, 2006), for example, tells about the development of the mountain bike from the ‘klunkerz’ race, which rose out of the Californian hippy
12 13
14
15
16
17 18
movement. It eventually was turned into a million-dollarindustry and mountain bikes are now seen globally (eg. Beijing Bicycles and the Yemeni short A Stranger in Her Own City by Khadija al-Salami). Graeme Obree, The Flying Scotsman, Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2004, page 120. In American Flyers, the national is even more overtly highlighted by have the US teams riding against the American Other of the 80s, the empire of evil – the Soviet Union. In the early 80s, we secondary pupils were ‘subjected’ at school to screenings, which by and large consisted of well-meaning teachers ordering a film from the Danish Film Council (in Danish it translates as ‘The Film Central of the State’, and if this sounds like something from the former Soviet Union then it is not missing the point by much). The film/Jørgen Leth narrates the two ‘objects’ in similar terms: [bike:] ‘The internal organs of the bike must not fail today,’ [rider:] ‘A good solid meal. All the elements the body needs,’ [bike:] ‘Today the grease has to be removed,’ [rider:] ‘Today nobody must disturb him,’ [bike:] ‘All resistance is being reduced to a minimum,’ [rider:] ‘This meal is his hour with himself,’ [bike:] ‘There is time enough for perfection today,’ [rider:] ‘In four hours he has to have this meal digested,’ [bike:] ‘And by then his bike also has to be ready.’ In Breaking Away, it is also the crank axle that is in the focus when the teenage hero makes a turnover on an old bike. However, contrary to Kuhle Wampe, the teenager is shot through the spinning chainwheel and not the spoke wheel, adding to the interpretation of the film as more preoccupied with the ‘fitting in’ rather than the human lifecycle. Apparently, Macmillan, on his bike, raced the stagecoach on his return to Dumfriesshire from Glasgow (http:// www.webscot.co.uk/greatscots/kirkpatrickmacmillan. htm) h ttp://www.dogme95.dk/menu/menuset.htm That is according to an interview on the Filmstalker website. (http://www.filmstalker.co.uk/archives/2007/08/ director_douglas_mackinnon.html)
the drouth 104