Director David Street wields his own camera on this no-nonsense documentary about cycling hero Graeme Obree. It’s a celebration of British maverick eccentricity, showing the Scottish cyclist, at 47, preparing himself to compete in the human-powered land speed record in Nevada in 2013. What he’s riding – and what we see him developing at some length, in his kitchen and elsewhere – isn’t your average bike, more a kind of hard, coffin-like pod that Obree rides while totally enclosed, face down. Constituent parts, in the R&D phase at least, include some old rollerblades and part of a used saucepan.
Street doesn’t quite make a gripping narrative out of Obree’s mission, and as a character study, the film seems to reveal its subject in accidental flashes, rather than by fully coherent design – we get a strong sense of the candid Obree’s obsessiveness and individuality, and his struggle with depression, although his coming out as gay in his 40s is only touched on. It’s in just missing the essence of the man that the film never quite crosses over out of the specialist sports doc bracket. But it’s an engaging watch, and Street’s own camera work provides attractive polish.
