Generally I like biopics because it is a great way of
finding out about the life of someone you probably didn't know that much about.
The problem is of course that filmmakers are prone to re-writing history or in
fact making the whole thing up in the name of entertainment.
'Eddie The Eagle' is very loosely based on the true story of
British Ski Jumper Eddie Edwards. Personally, I think the true story of
Edwards' quest would have been even more interesting but that's just me I
guess.
The film starts with Edwards’ (Taron Egerton) childhood where he is casting
off his leg braces to try to pursue his dream of going to the Olympics in any
sport that he can. His mother (Jo Hartley) is highly supportive of his ambition
but his sceptical father Terry (Keith Allen) isn't. His father wants him to instead
follow in the family plastering tradition. Which in real life he does, as a
necessity to finance his Olympic dream, but not here.
After exhausting all possible summer sports Edwards turns to
the winter events where he has more success and in a very short time becomes a
world class downhill skier. Sadly he is cut from the British team by the stuffy
Olympic selector Dustin Target (Tim McInnerny) just before the 1984 Olympics.
So he turned to ski jumping even though he didn't know much about
it and headed off to a ski jumping hill in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. It is there that he
meets one of the employees at the hill, Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman). Peary is
a former ski jumper who apparently squandered his career and now drowns himself
in alcohol. Which isn't true obviously.
Edwards attempts to learn to jump by trial and error while Peary
repeatedly tells him to quit before he kills himself. Eventually he persuades
Peary to coach him and then exploits the ancient qualification rules to qualify for
the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, something no one from Britain has done since
the 1920's.
Although there has been a lot of license taken with the story it is still a pretty decent film and a total crowd pleaser. It helps that the filmmakers chose a
decent actor in Taron Egerton, who clearly took the time to master the mannerisms of the real
Edwards.
With everything
being played for laughs it takes some of the gloss off what a steely determined
athlete Edwards really was but not all of it. His perseverance, dedication and hard
work ethic still manages to shine through. For pedants like me a documentary about his life is being
planned.
Edwards came last in Calgary but jumped a personal best of
71 metres, a mere 47 metres behind the Matti Nykanen who won gold. Of
course Pierre de Coubertin, the foundering father of the modern Games said that
the most important thing in the Olympic Games was ‘not to win but to take part’.
Which, obviously, also isn’t true. Winning is everything.
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