In Jordan Peele’s magnificent 2022 film “Nope,” there is a character, a cinematographer, who will do anything and everything to get that perfect shot, including risking his own life. He does so because this is the thing that drives him and fills him with purpose, providing clarity in the chaos of the world. It’s a motivating force that Joe Jennings, a skydiving cinematographer and the subject of the playfully titled documentary “Space Cowboy,” would likely understand well.
As a man who has made a life and career built around jumping out of planes to capture the beauty of the subsequent fall, the point of his profession is about finding meaning in life, no matter the risk. It’s something we all navigate, but few do so cheating death thousands upon thousands of feet above the ground. However, even they must eventually come drifting back down to Earth.
This rich question of finding meaning in the fall is something the documentary largely taps into, proving to be most intriguing when we just get to hear Jennings candidly reflect on the perils of his work alongside the stunning shots he captures. Even as “Space Cowboy” skimps on the substance to hefty, heady questions and doesn’t quite reach the heights its central figure does, it’s still an engaging portrait that sticks the landing. If you think that Tom Cruise is a maniac for all the times he’s jumped off things, he’s got nothing on Jennings.
The film, which premiered Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival, is a rather standard documentary. We get some talking head interviews, plenty of archival footage that guides us through the past, and a modern challenge playing out in the present as Jennings attempts to drop a car out of a plane, needing to somehow keep it steady for a group of divers to sit in it. Where other recent documentaries about people who live on the edge of danger, like the fantastic “Fire of Love” and “Free Solo,” strip away all the noise to fully immerse us in the heart and mind of its subject, “Space Cowboy” is more conventionally constructed. As directed by Marah Strauch and Bryce Leavitt, it gets the job done with efficiency, covering all it can in 98 minutes before pulling the ripcord, sacrificing a greater sense of depth in pursuit of breadth.
At the same time, whenever “Space Cowboy” takes us into the sky, it soars. That most of this comes from footage Jennings shot personally makes it feel like he, more than anyone else, deserves the credit as cinematographer. Hearing the wonder in his voice, still there after all these years, is understandable once we see the world through his eyes. With a camera strapped to his head, he becomes an acrobat of the sky, spinning and dancing through the air as if he were born up there.
Many of the most spectacular moments come when we see him working with the late Rob Harris, a talented sky surfer who Jennings would go on to win awards and acclaim with while flying alongside. Their partnership and the bond they formed, each in complete sync with the other, instills the film with profound emotion just as it does tragedy. We begin to feel that, much like life itself, just as there is awe to be found in the sky with them, it’s also a place of loss.
Hearing Jennings process and make sense of this, talking openly about his struggles with depression, is where the film begins to cut deeper. The very place that gave him his greatest joys in life is also the same thing that took away those he cares about. And yet, he goes back up, day after day, to jump again. This is never presented as some sort of schmaltzy “just keep going and it gets better” as much as it is a truthful confrontation with the tumultuousness of life. That Jennings continues to jump as his way of processing and finding a way to cope is a deeply human detail that the film takes the time to sit with. More than other similar documentaries about risk-takers, “Space Cowboy” offers up much more about loss and grieving.
When we then get back to the present with Jennings and his crew working on their car stunt, the film doesn’t carry the same weight. There is something interesting to seeing how they strip away all the heavy parts of the vehicle and try out various strategies to pull this off, though there are other details that the documentary just breezes past. We get a brief montage of how Jennings has worked on various Hollywood productions, but we don’t get to hear much about this process. This could be because they aren’t allowed to use a lot of footage from said films or discuss anything that played out behind the scenes, though it still leaves lingering questions about what it was like crafting them.
As a portrait of a dedicated filmmaker, daring stunt performer and man just living the only way he knows how, “Space Cowboy” is about more than just skydiving. It’s a film about finding a way to carry on after the jumps that go wrong to leap again. Just as we marvel at the moments of free fall, the documentary is about how life, even and especially for those throwing themselves into danger with arms wide open, is about finding ways to endure. It’s not just about getting that perfect shot, but how we live after finding ourselves back on the ground with the cameras off.
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