In the first shot of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN we’re assured that “this is a true story.” In this case, the true story involves 1950s Olympic ski hopeful Jill Kinmont, who suffered a career ending injury that put her in a wheel chair for the rest of her life.
Marilyn Hassett stars as Kinmont, and she’s likable enough, though her heavily intoned narration does a lot to drag the movie down. We’re told in super-important, sanctimonious tones all about her early skiing career (even though we’re seeing it unfold before us thanks to the magic of cinema).
To the film’s credit, once Hassett does find herself at first totally paralyzed and later confined to a wheel chair, we’re spared some of the usual inspirational “I think I can” nonsense. Yes, Hassett spouts some of this (as athletes are wont to do) but she is quickly put in her place by the more realistic tough love of her best buddy (Belinda Montgomery) who is already disabled thanks to Polio.
Beau Bridges is also on hand to offer Hassett some encouragement, as a famous skier and daredevil who becomes romantically interested in her. He’s charming and likable in a bro-dude sort of way, and it is touching the way he helps take care of Hassett when others find the situation too difficult to deal with.
Another thing the movie does nicely is show some of the nuts and bolts of day to day paralyzed living – how difficult it is to eat a potato chip, for instance, or transfer from a car seat to your wheel chair, or the mechanics of getting an injured woman onto and off of a stretcher or into and out of surgery without injuring her even more. There’s a particularly effective scene in which Hassett is suspended upside down and her parents slide onto the floor underneath her for their hospital visit.
Unfortunately the overall cloying tone of the movie serves to undermine most of this good stuff. You can’t help but wonder, as the movie unfolds, why people equate tragedy with romance. I’m not saying you shouldn’t make a movie with a sad ending, or where characters experience hardship – obviously that’d be ridiculous. Still, there’s this kind of “Chicken Soup for the Soul”/movie of the week approach that almost seems to fetishize struggle, pain and sadness.
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