Name a sport and there's almost certainly a movie that puts it out front in some way. I never saw the movie "Ice Castles" but I did see "The Cutting Edge." The first time was in a motorcoach tour, a setting where I certainly could not appreciate all the fine points. Still, I gained a good enough impression to realize the movie had legs.
It had legs, yes, but in what context? As truly a sports movie with a sense of triumph at the end? I suppose this was the kind of plot that was parodied in the movie "The Comebacks." A formula gets overdone over time and then catches the eye of the parody artists. The treadmill got walked one too many times with music star biopic movies - the last straw was "Walk the Line" - so we got "Walk Hard" with John C. Reilly.
"The Cutting Edge" is most certainly a showcase movie for ice skating. It follows the formula where our heroic characters have ups and downs that create suspense/tension. Doubt is weighed.
There was a time when we could not count on the happiest of endings with sports movies. By "happy" I mean the most sympathetic characters achieving No. 1. Before the mid-1980s basketball movie "Hoosiers," sports movies might have our heroes stumbling at the end but getting consolation through realizing the best values, the most transcendent. I guess I'm thinking of the 1970s as when this story line might be expected. It was a Murphy's Law sort of decade in terms of the macro events and issues. So, movies felt free to show that being "number one" was not an end-all. Only in the '70s could we get a blockbuster star-filled movie about the Allies' biggest disaster of WWII. The disaster was Operation Market Garden and the movie was "A Bridge Too Far."
How could we rationalize such movies? It's a tough question to answer now, as we have been bathed in an optimism-filled world for so long. We had the "go-go '90s" for Wall Street. And Wall Street penetrates new ceilings all the time, even with the cloud of the pandemic: strange. Might we be whistling past the graveyard? Well, not yet.
Setting new meme
"Hoosiers" was the turning point movie in my view because it practically shouted traditional values at us: respect the authority figure, the coach. Gene Hackman's word was "the law," perhaps a dodgy proposition for the generation that grew up protesting the Vietnam war. Shall we go back to recognizing "Father Knows Best?" Well, coach knew best in the fictional Hickory, Indiana.
There were no hippies in 1952 America. We might yearn for the orderliness of the time, the lack of complications with values. The romantic sheen of all that was rather myth. Under the orderly surface oozed a range of dysfunction.
"The Cutting Edge" movie came out in 1992. Didn't the Internet basically start in that year? Seems not long ago but really it is. It is a defining movie for the sport of figure skating, to be sure. But something else supersedes that. It is the quintessential romance movie. By "romance" I'm indicating the mythical kind, what we Americans love to recognize. "Romance" in such stories is an ethereal thing that develops almost like magic.
It is a disservice to our youth to suggest that an ideal partnership grows from such a foundation. I would suggest that if this is the desired model for romance - the kind of romance that sweeps you off your feet - it can easily lead to divorce. Life gets messy and complicated. Even Bill and Melinda Gates get divorced. No, young people should not think there's a mysterious, ethereal quality that will connect them to a partner.
Contrast to reality
Marriage is a proposition that involves facing myriad challenges. And of course, such challenges tend to be the mundane kind, the kind you cannot escape, and are nothing like the glamorous world of international figure skating! So let's view "The Cutting Edge" as pure entertainment fantasy. Let's pretend that "love conquers all" just like in the movie, for at least the time you're in your seat at the theater.
Hollywood is escapism and "the dream factory." Nothing wrong with that if you recognize it.
So of course the movie has to give us absolutely beautiful people. Only young people who look like Moira Kelly and D.B. Sweeney could play these roles. Plain-looking and overweight people needn't apply! Yet I'm sure countless plain-looking and ordinary people with no extraordinary talent watched the movie and were enthralled. Yes, the movie objectified people. It admits we have a certain model in our heads for supremely attractive and desirable (as partners) young people.
Is this benign? Maybe it's a rhetorical question, maybe not.
Can't "beautiful people" have a depressing effect on the rest of us? So here in this finely crafted movie we see the American myth of the ethereal romance, epitomized. Love conquers all and gets you the gold medal. Sweeney as "Doug Dorsey" is the first to say "I love you." Kelly as "Kate Moseley" appears taken aback at first, flummoxed as it were by this statement that should not have surprised her. She composes herself and then instead of being distracted, comes on strong with the best focus of her life to wow the judges with her partner.
Patriotism and love
Fans wave American flags to add to the tear-jerker quality. American patriotism and love. The father is present and beams. The ecstatic coach makes gestures to show his enthusiasm. All the characters who at one time or another were conflicted and showed human flaws, were in the end triumphant and flawless. We forget about the line earlier in the movie where Moseley confronts her father about how she "just wanted to be your little girl." In the '70s the movie's climax might not have involved a gold medal but it would have a revelatory sense by the father: "Yes, I love you because you're my daughter," period. Put aside the objectification.
But typical of our contemporary optimistic times, everyone gets to have their cake and eat it too! And the following day we'd see the Dow Jones shoot up a couple hundred more points because, why not? My God, the "business news" of the 1970s was nothing like this. We were smarting from the catastrophic Vietnam war. We saw the fall of Saigon. And my God, Watergate came along in a time when there was no intimidating right wing media like Fox News to provide shelter for the wrongdoers.
Sans pimples, yes
Are Americans of today comfortable with the romanticizing template of "The Cutting Edge?" And with the idyllic characters who we can assume never had pimples? Shouldn't we be troubled to have such a formula in our face: beautiful young people who meld by movie's end as if some spiritual force is at work? We must all realize that "real life" bears little resemblance to this. But if it is just a night of fantasy at the movie theater, well then who gives a rip?
"The Cutting Edge" was directed by Paul Michael Glaser and written by Tony Gilroy. The story reaches its apex at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. The heroes' chief rivals at the end are Soviets. We wonder after the presidency of Donald Trump if "the Soviets" or Russians are really the bad guys anymore. And don't we have normal relations with Vietnam? Saigon is re-named? And we Americans just move on?
We always move on for better or worse. And we ought to move on from the notion that "love" is this confounding but magical quality that operates beyond our understanding. When you marry someone, make sure both of you have a good economic foundation. So much more important than being "beautiful" or pimple-free.
Escapism? Yes, "The Cutting Edge" most certainly is. Ice is slippery. Be prepared to fall on your a--.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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