A Brief History of Chasing Storms (dir. Curtis Miller)

By: Adam Freed

The ominous onyx clouds of a storm over The Great Plains are unmistakable.  Curtis Miller’s weather documentary, A Brief History of Chasing Storms opens without narration or context, only with a brief view of a topographical map of The United States as it stretches from the Red River on the Texas / Oklahoma border all the way north to the Dakotas.  This broad swath of American flyover country is colloquially known as “Tornado Alley”, a moniker it has earned due to its unmistakable bad fortune, and opportune climate conditions for it becoming the harbinger of swirling death from above.  

Miller’s succinct, yet powerful documentary is understated in its presentation, allowing the images of small tornado-ravaged towns like Woodward, OK, Lubbock, TX and Codell, KS to tell their terrifying stories as municipalities that have stared down the swirling devil, and somehow lived to tell the tale.  By avoiding the overly saturated narration that inundates many modern documentaries, audiences are permitted to live inside the horrifying realities of life in Tornado Alley.  Using a nicely balanced mixture of former news stories, and archival images, A Brief History of Chasing Storms watches very much like a loved one searching the remnants of a cyclone ravaged home, for meaningful evidence to tell the story of what has occurred.  Curtis Miller acts as historian, using much of his research to paint a tale of perception versus reality as it applies to life in middle America.

At the apex of the film’s intensity, Miller centralizes the story of the May 11, 1970 Fujita Scale 5 tornado that decimated Lubbock, Texas.  This biblical weather event produced a cyclone more than 8 miles in width that  exhaled winds in excess of 250 miles per hour and rained hellfire with grapefruit sized hail.  While there is no outward agenda behind Miller’s documentary, its impact is likely to hinge on one's fascination or fear as it applies to weather events.  As a storyteller, Curtis Miller allows the voices and images of the tornado survivors to paint the prominent picture of survivors' guilt.

Target Score 6.5/10:  A Brief History of Chasing storms is a methodically paced documentary that shines a spotlight on the humanity left in the wake of a tornado’s destruction.  Director Curtis Miller allows the voices of survivors to tell the story of America’s ongoing battle with Mother Nature across America’s Great Plains. 

A Brief History of Chasing Storms is included in Movie Archer's coverage of the 61st Chicago International Film Festival.