The sound of the morning after bonfire crackles and breaks long after the solstice party recedes into the black, empty screen. For several moments it’s just us, the snapping and feeding of twigs, leftover murmurs and observations of the kid fire tenders and the crepitating fire. Even as the black peels away and we’re put on the roof of a car making its way up a mountain road, the bonfire seems to burn, however faintly. The glittering pitch asphalt, the yellow dashes, wind and rush beneath the hood, until all we hear is an old car running.
It’s a little unsettling, this view. The sharp turns around shorn and pebbly rock faces, calamitous drops just beyond the aluminum bands of guardrail – this could be the Rockies or the Sierras, but might also be the Alps or the Andes or the Cascades for all I know. I don’t really like winding roads let alone those You Are There shots you see on car ads, where spinning tire meets zipping road. But still, ok, it’s pretty, the muscular peaks, the endless fir, the piles of snow roadside or weighing on trees or tucked into mountainside or crowning rocks in streams. Carson obviously has more money available to him than your average documentarian, but a comfortably swooping aerial view of the Volvo as it climbs through mountain landscapes is not in the picture.
Anyway, the title card rises as we swerve from every precipice: