In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based on where my interests lead me and what’s available from my local public library.
Three boys grow up in Rockford, Illinois and became fast friends, bonding over their dysfunctional families and love of skateboarding. Rockford is not a small town—in fact, with a population close to 150,000 it’s the fifth-largest city in Illinois and the largest outside the Chicago Metro area—but has definitely seen better days.* One of the boys attends a local community college, studies literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and begins to work in the film industry, while the other two remain in Rockford.
Bing Liu, the one who left, decided to return to Rockford to make his first feature film. His focus is on the lives of the three friends, documenting their present and exploring their pasts with the help of footage shot over 12 years (Liu is 14 in the earliest footage). Watching their stories unspool, you may feel like you’re watching a reverse spin on Stephen King’s It, where only one friend escapes the cursed town and makes something of his life while the remainder stay behind and stuck.
Not that Rockford is necessarily cursed: it may be the rust belt but the unemployment rate is lower than in the state as a whole, as is the cost of living. Still, it’s not easy to get a start without education, connections, or a sense of where you want your life to go. Keire Johnson begins working in food service, while Zack Mulligan becomes a father and works as a roofer while helping raise his child with his girlfriend Nina. Zack hasn’t grown into the role yet and seems to regard himself more as an uncle who sometimes babysits but shouldn’t have his freedom curtailed. Nina isn’t having any and is quick to remind him of his responsibilities and to guard the precious free time she has between working and being a mom.
Liu includes himself as a subject while also acting as filmmaker and does not set himself apart from his friends, judge them, or slag the town where he grew up. Instead, he lets the viewer observe what he places before them and make their own judgments. Interestingly, the three young men represent three of the four major population groups in the city: Zack is white, Keire is African American, and Bing is Asian.
Minding the Gap is the opposite of a muckraking doc: it maintains a calm demeanor and honors the specificity of each person’s experience. At times it threatens to become a paean to the joys of being a carefree young man skateboarding through quiet city streets and exploring the skeletons of its industrial past. The present-day footage is more matter-of-fact, with interviews and present-day shots of their lives making clear the distinction between the best moments of life and the rest of them. A well-written and -chosen soundtrack by Nathan Halpern and Chris Ruggiero sets the mood appropriately and helps maintain a positive mood when it would have been easy to go in the other direction.
As is almost inevitable in a film that examines the behavior of real people, some uncomfortable truths are revealed over the course of Minding the Gap, most importantly that cycles of abuse can be perpetuated across generations. The lives of the three central figures diverge further over the course of filming, raising the question of why, given their similarities and lack of privilege in childhood. Liu doesn’t provide an answer, and the omission of an explicit moral makes this film much more interesting than if he’d done that work for the viewer.
Minding the Gap was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 91st Academy Awards (losing to the more spectacular Free Solo by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin), won a Peabody Award, and was named by President Barack Obama as one of his favorite films of the year. | Sarah Boslaugh
* It’s a lot like St. Louis in that regard, and for a lot of the same reasons.
Spine #: 1061
Technical details: 93 min; color; screen ratio 1.78:1; English.
Edition reviewed: DVD
Extras: two audio commentaries, one with director Bing Liu and the other with Liu and documentary subjects Keire Johnson and Zack Mulligan; follow-up conversation between Liu and documentary subject Nina Bowgren (mother of Zack’s child); interviews with professional skateboarder Tony Hawk and with Lius, executive producer Gordon Quinn, and producer Diane Quon; four outtakes introduced by Liu; short “Nuóc” by Liu; trailer; booklet including an essay by Jay Caspian Kang.
Fun Fact: As of the time of writing (July 2025), Minding the Gap retains a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (rottentomatoes.com) with 128 reviews.
Parting Thought: What does the title mean? I have several interpretations, none of which involve the London Underground, but answering that question may help you decide what you think this film is about.
