A (slightly fictionalized) story of Britain's 1924 Olympic track team, Chariots of Fire still stands as not only one of the great sports movies, but also as one of the great costume dramas. For the uninitiated, here is the trailer:
As a child, I adored Chariots of Fire. My father first showed it to my brother, sister, and me when I was about 6 years old. I loved it so much that I used to tell people I was going to be a track star like Eric Liddell when I grew up. When playing in the backyard, I would take my mother's garden shovel and dig a small hole like the runners do in Chariots of Fire prior to their races. I was convinced Eric Liddell was the greatest runner of all time. When my dad informed me Liddell's records had been broken, I was crushed.
It has been years since I last watched this film--more than 20--and seeing it again as an adult was a true treat, especially because so much of the film's sociopolitical issues went way over my head when I was a child.
A story of two rivals, Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, this film is really about the loneliness and exploitation that come from being an outsider.
Harold, a Jew, yearns to be accepted as an Englishman, but the anti-Semitism of upper-crust British society holds him back. As he tells his girlfriend (and later wife) Sybil, "They lead me to the water, but won't let me drink." From the moment we first see Harold, he is berated, gently but cruelly, for being Jewish. Yet, he does not accept this treatment at all. For him, as for Liddell, who I will get into momentarily, running is both a balm and a defense. Harold's talent as a runner, his heretofore unsurpassed speed and agility, are as he himself puts it a "weapon" against the stigma and prejudice directed toward him for being a Jew. That is, his talent is unsurpassed until he races Eric Liddell.
Liddell, the film's dual protagonist who is also an outsider, is a Scot who must run for Great Britain. A pious man, Liddell's principles are put to the test in one of the more moving scenes of the film. After arriving at the Olympics and learning his race will take place on Sunday, Liddell refuses to run. He is forced to meet with several aristocrats - the Prince of Wales among them - who all attempt to coerce him to run despite his principles. In the end, Liddell's teammate Lord Lindsay offers to swap races with Liddell. While it is easy to dismiss Liddell's reasoning as religious zealotry, his religious beliefs actually have little to do with the actual conflict. His being Scottish puts him at odds with the British aristocracy's expectations; his status as an outsider fuels the tension here, but is also the true source of the stigma he receives, much like Harold.
These two characters and their relative experiences as outsiders within British society - and more specifically on the Olympic team - are at the heart of this film and are what drives the emotional pull.
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| Harold replays the loss over and over... |
Truly, one of the most moving scenes of the entire film and one that has stayed with me since childhood is when Harold loses to Liddell. It is Harold's first loss, and we first see the race in real time. After that, the glorious Vangelis score nails the overwhelming self-flagellation Harold puts himself through as he recounts the race over and over. The sound in this sequence is brilliant, allowing the audience first to hear the actual sounds of the race, then silence just before the Vangelis music crescendos. This brief moment of silence allows us to feel the utter distress Harold feels as he loses. After that, the repetitive sound of the arena's chairs being closed up echo over the music. Harold is the only person in the arena as this sound grows louder, making his replaying the race in his head that much more palpable. At the risk of overstatement, I cannot think of another film that captures so movingly how it feels to lose.
The film is framed like a memory. The opening scene is of Harold's funeral in January 1978, and Lindsay is giving the eulogy. As Lindsay says, only he and Aubrey Montague remain of the 1924 team, and only they remember the true Abrahams. It then shifts to that famous and magnificent slow motion scene with the theme:
Soon after, the film goes to Aubrey, who is writing to his parents from Paris just before the Olympic games begin. In yet another layer, the film shifts to 1919 when Aubrey and Harold meet as they arrive at Cambridge as freshmen. These many layers to the film's narrative in a way excuse the historic errors (Liddell learning of the Sunday races when he's getting on the boat, Harold marrying Sybil Gordon instead of Sybil Evers, etc.) as they can be accounted for by the narrators' now nostalgic memory. Moreover, one of my favorite scenes is when Harold has dinner with Sybil for the first time. Although in real life Harold married another woman named Sybil who also happened to be a singer and met her ten years later than the movie portrays, the tension between movie-Sybil, played with elegance, grace, and intelligence by Alice Krige, and Harold fuels a large part of the drama and enriches the film's themes--the losing scene being one of the best examples. The fact that it is recounted through so many layers of memory actually makes the drama richer, for we as humans tend to remember younger days with fondness and romance.
Beyond the characters and conflicts, this film stands out in every aspect of cinema. The costumes are perfection, for which Chariots of Fire rightly won an Oscar. The acting is also stellar, especially Ben Cross, who captures Harold's arrogance and insecurities with gusto, bringing some passion to a character that could have been just another dude in a sports movie. Cross's portrayal of Harold is layered and matures so beautifully as the film progresses.
Ian Charleson, who played Eric Liddell to such infinitesimal preciseness that he even mimicked Liddell's breathing style as he ran, died of AIDS in 1990 when he was only 40 years old. Since his death, British theatre presents an annual Ian Charleson Award that recognizes new actors under the age of 30. Named in his honor, the award is most prestigious. His performance in Chariots of Fire is memorable and offers a sensitive yet noble counter to Cross's more fiery Harold.
Altogether, Chariots of Fire is an immaculate experience. More than just a sports movie, the film encompasses several genres at once - biopic, costume drama, coming of age story - and manages to combine so many disparate yet joined themes that explain what it means to be human: love, winning, losing, proving one's worth, holding to principles, and yearning to belong.
Grade: A+
