Wendy Ide 

Grazing the Sky review – acrobats soar with staggering eloquence

Handsome documentary about the new breed of circus performers as they learn to stage impossible feats of strength and balance
  
  

Grazing the Sky film still
‘Precisely judged flirtations with gravity’ … Grazing the Sky film still Photograph: film company handout

There’s a striking sequence, right at the end of this handsome documentary about the new breed of circus acrobats. It’s a montage of exquisitely lit impossible feats of strength and balance, set to the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th. Dangling from ropes; spinning in giant hoops; catapulted skyward, these are performers with a staggering physical eloquence. Inevitably perhaps, when they start to talk about their art, it’s something of a let down. You rather wish Alcala had let the bodies – with their steel cable knots of muscles, their precisely judged flirtations with gravity, the attrition of injuries – speak for themselves. The film also lacks a satisfying arc. We are introduced to a clutch of performers at the start of their careers, but there are too many characters to feel that we are witnessing much of a journey or a growth in skill. Still, the cinematography is arresting and the acrobats are a ridiculously photogenic bunch.

 

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