Review/Meta/Snippet: "The Cutting Edge"
Decided instead of my first movie choice to watch The Cutting Edge again instead. Which may have briefly made me even crankier at Notting Hill - generally, I would far rather stories about women and men rather than about a boy and a girl, and this is an example of the opposite - but then washed all that away with my on-going love of this movie.
Not going to great lengths here, but damn I love this movie. Yeah, there's a high cheese factor and it's either the third or the fourth oldest plot in the history of story-telling, but. Man. Moria Kelly and DB Sweeny crackle from the first *second* they meet. Their characters are both flawed, both reaching for something better than themselves, both failing because of those flaws. And what a great set of supporting characters - Anton, Kate's old coach, Doug's brother - all of them ring true for me.
And the romance - the romance works for me. Which it generally does not in film.
Why did you stay with me? Kate asks. We worked so hard for two years. And that's what gets me - the intense length and depth of these two's understanding of each other. You came, every day, and skated...
I need to think more on why I accept Doug and Kate falling into a romantic relationship, when I reject the romance element of other, somewhat similar relationships (Frodo and Sam, for example. Or Aubry/Mautrin.) I'd go for the obvious answer - I was a kid when I first saw TCE, and still believed in happy ever after - except the same strings still get tugged today.
(And on the Frodo/Sam note, TCE even has an element of class difference.)
I'm not sure how invested I am in the happy ever after, though, for Doug and Kate. There is this scene in my head.
Early winter morning, a long stretch of frozen lake. A narrow finger of the lake, with trees bending over it. Kate's skating - long, smooth strokes, power strokes. She's moving fast, but within herself. And you can see that she's not seeing the trees flash by, nor the wisps of cloud in the forest, nor the occasional solitary snowflake. She's there, completely there in the moment - weight shifting from outside to inside of her feet, from side to side so that she feels the roll along the bones of her pelvis.
She's in love with the ice, with the movement over it.
And what you don't see is the house and the bed she left this morning, empty and cold, but there are drawings and photo graphs on the frig, a handful of letters on the kitchen table. Doug is back in Minnesota, and his oldest is almost eight. He calls more often than he writes. She writes to him, telling him of the place she bought, the people in the town. He tells her of the bar league he plays in, and how the guys tease him about wearing a tutu to the game. He wants to buy a share in his brother's bar - maybe start another across town. He's happy, and his days are full.
Kate slows, stops short of the thin line where the ice opens up out on to the lake. When she looks back, she can follow the tracks of her skates, until the midst over lies them and everything is silver.
You taught me to love the ice, she wants to tell him. She wants to tell him that of everything he tried to give her - himself, a family, a medal, a future - she needed that the most.
She thinks he knows already. She'll call tonight, tell him about the lines on the ice, pointing back the way she came, and hope he'll understand.
Anyway. Yeah, I like that movie a lot.
Not going to great lengths here, but damn I love this movie. Yeah, there's a high cheese factor and it's either the third or the fourth oldest plot in the history of story-telling, but. Man. Moria Kelly and DB Sweeny crackle from the first *second* they meet. Their characters are both flawed, both reaching for something better than themselves, both failing because of those flaws. And what a great set of supporting characters - Anton, Kate's old coach, Doug's brother - all of them ring true for me.
And the romance - the romance works for me. Which it generally does not in film.
Why did you stay with me? Kate asks. We worked so hard for two years. And that's what gets me - the intense length and depth of these two's understanding of each other. You came, every day, and skated...
I need to think more on why I accept Doug and Kate falling into a romantic relationship, when I reject the romance element of other, somewhat similar relationships (Frodo and Sam, for example. Or Aubry/Mautrin.) I'd go for the obvious answer - I was a kid when I first saw TCE, and still believed in happy ever after - except the same strings still get tugged today.
(And on the Frodo/Sam note, TCE even has an element of class difference.)
I'm not sure how invested I am in the happy ever after, though, for Doug and Kate. There is this scene in my head.
Early winter morning, a long stretch of frozen lake. A narrow finger of the lake, with trees bending over it. Kate's skating - long, smooth strokes, power strokes. She's moving fast, but within herself. And you can see that she's not seeing the trees flash by, nor the wisps of cloud in the forest, nor the occasional solitary snowflake. She's there, completely there in the moment - weight shifting from outside to inside of her feet, from side to side so that she feels the roll along the bones of her pelvis.
She's in love with the ice, with the movement over it.
And what you don't see is the house and the bed she left this morning, empty and cold, but there are drawings and photo graphs on the frig, a handful of letters on the kitchen table. Doug is back in Minnesota, and his oldest is almost eight. He calls more often than he writes. She writes to him, telling him of the place she bought, the people in the town. He tells her of the bar league he plays in, and how the guys tease him about wearing a tutu to the game. He wants to buy a share in his brother's bar - maybe start another across town. He's happy, and his days are full.
Kate slows, stops short of the thin line where the ice opens up out on to the lake. When she looks back, she can follow the tracks of her skates, until the midst over lies them and everything is silver.
You taught me to love the ice, she wants to tell him. She wants to tell him that of everything he tried to give her - himself, a family, a medal, a future - she needed that the most.
She thinks he knows already. She'll call tonight, tell him about the lines on the ice, pointing back the way she came, and hope he'll understand.
Anyway. Yeah, I like that movie a lot.