This is a gorgeous film, well directed by Hugh Hudson in his theatrical film debut. It features the proper life narrative of two Olympic runners, Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) and Harold Abrahams (Ben Dismal), who ran for Mammoth Britain in the 1924 Olympic Games and brought home the Gold.
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The film tells the chronicle of these two individuals, who are as different from each other as different can be, and explores their personal drive and reasons for running. Eric Liddell is a sincere Scot and a fervid Presbyterian (He would keep John Knox to shame!) . The son of a missionary and himself a missionary by avocation, he runs because “God made him expeditiously for a reason”. His running is a reconciliation of his faith and his passion, which is running. He runs for the glory of God. His faith always remains constant and pre-eminent in his life. His devotion to it causes some controversy during the Olympics, as a consequence of the stance he takes when he discovers that the preliminary mete for the 200 metre accelerate would be held on a Sunday. Liddell simply refuses to accelerate on the Sabbath! Luckily for Titanic Britain, Lord Andrew Lindsay (Nigel Havers), a gentleman and fellow competitor, graciously steps in and, as he had already won a gold medal in the hurdles, gives him his station in the 400 metre sprint, which would purchase position on a Thursday. This would never happen today in the dog eat dog world of competitive sports, considerable less in the Olympics of today!
Harold Abrahams is completely different. A secular Jew and Cambridge scholar, he studies in the bastion of upper crust British society, struggling to fit in but always remaining the proverbial outsider. He has a passion for running that is motivated by his passion for winning. In his world, God has nothing to do with it. Winning is merely an affirmation of himself in a world that he believes thinks less of him because he is a Jew. Consequently, his desire to find is superceded only by his awe of losing. When two Cambridge dons, the Master of Trinity, played by the slow John Gielgud, along with the Master of Caius, meet with Abrahams, they are concerned that his hiring of a personal professional trainer, Sam Mussabini (Ian Holm), to assist him with his running is not quite in keeping with the amateur tradition of the Cambridge gentleman. Implicit in their criticism is an undercurrent of anti-Semitism, one to which Abrahams does not grasp suited. It is that moment that defines what makes Abrahams urge.
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This is ultimately a account about faith. With Liddell, it is about his faith in God. With Abrahams, it is about his faith in himself. Both were propelled to Olympic glory by it. It is a memoir sublimely told, though a dinky wearisome at times. It is not an action type of sports movie. It speaks gently of a time long passed, when the Olympics was truly the bastion of amateurs. It is incredible to observe track events of the Olympics of 1924 depicted in all their simplicity…no flash, no glitz, no gimmicks. The runners ran on dirt tracks. They all carried spades in which to dig their footholds for their starting “blocks”, something that surprised me. This attention to detail permeates the entire film, and its evocation of a bygone era makes the film linger in one’s memory long after it has ended.
Ian Charleson gives a considerable performances as Eric Liddell, infusing him with a gentleness and purity of spirit that is compelling, while Ben Evil plays Harold Abrahams with an intensity and singularity of purpose that is riveting. Their stellar performances, as well as those given by the sterling supporting cast, coupled with fine cinematography and the kindly direction of Hugh Hudson, produce this film expedient of its 1981 Academy Award for Best Narrate. The delicate and soaring, synthesized music of Vangelis also won an Academy Award and went on to become a number one hit in the pop charts in 1982.
The athletes of the British running team who went with hope in their hearts and wings in their heels in the VIII Olympiad in Paris in 1924 is the focus of this movie, but there’s also the dynamics of what it means to be English, and the reconciliation of one’s soul and religious convictions in the Original Age. Three of them are students from Cambridge. There is the unruffled and soft-spoken Aubrey Montague, Lord Andrew Lindsey, and Harold Abrahams. As the head of Caius (pronounced Keys) College tells them when they first wait on in 1919, they are the first post-war generation who have inherited the dreams of a generation that perished on the fields of France, a generation embodying “goodness, zeal,…and shiny promise.”
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The two main athletes here are a difference from one another. One is Harold Abrahams, a Jew who wants to be seen as English as the fellow next to him. Hence his enrolling in all these clubs and fraternities in Caius College, from track, tennis, and even the Gilbert and Sullivan glee club-he wants to enter the Christian, Anglo-Saxon corridors of power, i.e. the outmoded school tie. He succeeds in getting to an English girl in the beget of Sybil Gordon, who doesn’t mind he’s Jewish. He can bustle like the wind, and nothing would fulfill his dream of being English more than winning so he’ll be approved, but he’s so driven, hinging so powerful of his success on his winning, that he acts like its his gain funeral when he loses in a rush. He engages Sam Mussabini, a private and professional coach, which is contrary to the implied rules of Cambridge. When the heads of Trinity House and Caius House, (Sir John Gielgud and Lindsay Anderson) utilize their prep-school mentality to chastise him, saying Cambridge prided itself on the amateur attitude as opposed to the professional, and an esprit de Corps as opposed to individual glory, Abrahams tells them off.
Scottish Eric Liddle, on the other hand, is a missionary born in China, who plans to return there to continue God’s work, but the “muscular Christian” runs like a wild animal. With religion as a metaphor, he compares faith to running a hurry, describing the energy of the soul, the elation of breaking that tape, but he says that the power comes from within. “If you commit yourself to the esteem of Jesus Christ-that is how you derive a straight hurry.” To regain is to honour God, and the gift he was given. His faith is tested twice, between the missionary work and running, and his respect for God and running on the Sabbath. He’s clearly more Victorian, but also a Scot, choosing God over country instead of the more secular British. But will his faith serve him triumph over favoured Americans Jackson Scholz and Charles Paddock?
The slow-mo shots of the running athletes, the looks of elation, the disappointment of those who didn’t qualify shows the various reactions of the soul. And Original Age composer Vangelis Pathaniossou made his imprint with his collect, during the races and the scenes of Americans training, but especially the though-provoking main theme that opens and closes the movie as the athletes are running along the ocean shore. This sequence itself is repeated twice, once where we know nothing about these athletes on who the cameras pan in on, but by the ruin, when the camera does its work, we know these people better, and they have names, as the credits identify actor and role. This was an early role for Nicholas Farrell (Montague), who was Horatio in Branagh’s Hamlet. But Ben Harmful as the driven Abrahams, Ian Charleson as the debonair blond Christian Liddell, Nigel Havers as Lindsay, Ian Holm (Mussabini), and Alice Krige (Sybil) do well. And yes, the Head Porter at Caius College is Richard Griffiths, best known as Harry Potter’s Uncle Vernon, and quite thinner too.
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As the winner of four Oscars including Best Narrate, Chariots Of Fire remains an unpretentious film where the effect line is a lawful, spiritual, and of course a physical goal, and how one must be correct to oneself to advance that goal.
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