The Ice King

Long before Torvill and Dean became the faced of British fig­ure skat­ing, the ice was as metaphor­i­cal­ly cold as it was phys­i­cal­ly. In the ear­ly days down at the rink, every jump, swoop and glide was to be exe­cut­ed with stiff pre­ci­sion. For male skaters, their rou­tines were rous­ing dis­plays of ath­let­ic prowess – not the soul­ful frozen bal­lets more famil­iar to a con­tem­po­rary audience.

Some­where down the line, skat­ing turned into a lyri­cal pur­suit com­bin­ing tech­ni­cal abil­i­ty with artis­tic flair. The Ice King seeks to chart the trans­for­ma­tion of ice skat­ing into the Win­ter Olympics main­stay which con­sis­tent­ly brings audi­ences to tears, through focus­ing a lens on one man cred­it­ed with chang­ing the game.

The sub­ject in ques­tion is 1976 Olympic and World cham­pi­on John Cur­ry, who makes for a fas­ci­nat­ing sub­ject due to his impact on the world of pro­fes­sion­al skat­ing. It’s dif­fi­cult to know how much this doc­u­men­tary will appeal to any­one with­out at least a pass­ing inter­est in the sport, but John’s sin­gle-mind­ed deter­mi­na­tion to skate in his own, bal­let-influ­enced style, had an unde­ni­able impact.

Although Cur­ry died in 1994 from an AIDS-relat­ed heart attack at the age of 44, he lives on the authen­tic accounts deliv­ered by those who knew him best, who for the most part avoid falling into over­wrought sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, as his con­fi­dants remain keen to stress Curry’s unde­ni­able tal­ent, but also his flaws (chiefly being dif­fi­cult to work with, and often care­less with the feel­ings of those clos­est to him).

Cur­ry often proves to be his own best source mate­r­i­al due to the wealth of video footage of him that exists, both on and off the ice. The film flits between these clips and talk­ing heads, as well as employ­ing Fred­die Fox to nar­rate a selec­tion of Curry’s per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence with fel­low skater and ex-lover Heinz Wirz. Fox affects Curry’s dis­tinc­tive accent with remark­able accu­ra­cy in what’s a fair­ly risky move – blur­ring fact with fic­tion in order to bring Cur­ry back to life. Insights into the world of pro­fes­sion­al skat­ing prove fas­ci­nat­ing too, such as how The Roy­al Albert Hall was trans­formed into a skat­ing rink for one of Curry’s shows.

There are par­al­lels to be drawn between Cur­ry and Odette of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and the film has a deep sense of melan­choly about it, high­light­ing ear­ly on Curry’s strug­gle with his men­tal health, as well as the pres­sure placed upon him as a gay sports­man in the 1970s. It’s slight­ly strange then that the film goes to great lengths to con­vey this strug­gle, and then writes off the reac­tion of audi­ences as being fair­ly unre­mark­able. The fram­ing feels a lit­tle pre­oc­cu­pied with Curry’s sta­tus as a gay man.

The biggest suc­cess of The Ice King is bring­ing togeth­er the com­pelling archive footage of Curry’s skat­ing rou­tines and their haunt­ing clas­si­cal accom­pa­ni­ments – it’s clear that Cur­ry had a last­ing impact upon the world he inhab­it­ed, and being afford­ed a glimpse into this for a short amount of time feels like a priv­i­lege. It’s a shame The Ice King can’t focus more on Curry’s lega­cy than his per­son­al life.