Sitting here in 2020, I see 1981’s Chariots of Fire as something of a weird anomaly. It won the Oscar for Best Picture, but does anyone really talk about it anymore? Aside from the iconic theme music and the knowledge that it’s about some men who like running, I couldn’t say I really knew anything at all about this movie.
But then I watched the movie before it left HBO and now, well, it’s still a little weird but for different reasons.
Opening and closing with the same scene of a group of English men running along the beach set to some rather futuristic-sounding music, Chariots of Fire is the story of two men who love running and want to win races for two very different reasons. One, Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), wants to win to get one over on the antisemitism he’s suffered as the son of a Jewish immigrant even as he goes to some of England’s best schools…or perhaps because of that reason. Meanwhile, Scottish Christian missionary Eric Liddell (Ian Charleston) wants to run to glorify God. So, we have our set-up, the movie is following both of these men, and it’s based on their actual athletic achievements in the 1924 Paris Olympics. They’re friends or rivals, right?
Well, not really. The two don’t really interact much. Liddell beats Abrahams in their first race together, but there’s no big triumphant rematch at the end of the movie. Liddell’s religious conviction doesn’t lead to any clashes with the Jewish Abrahams. They’re on the same team, and the movie alternates between upperclass Abrahams’s story and Liddell’s religion occasionally conflicting with his athletic goals. Both men are competitive and want to win races, but neither of them are assholes. it just seems a little weird to me since so many sports movies, especially ones based on true stories, would make these guys rivals or at least friends. Instead, they barely spend time with each other.
Who knows? Maybe the filmmakers wanted to tell the story of one or both men, but neither had enough that struck the writers as sufficient for a single film. Many of Abrahams’s Cambridge friends and classmates are also on the team, but we don’t learn nearly as much about them. The big rivals are the American Olympics team, but the runners there, when given a chance to speak at all, are friendly enough. This is a movie where the only “bad guy” is arguably the clock when the men are running, and maybe anyone outside the running world that may be a minor impediment to whatever it is Liddell and Abrahams are doing.
Then we can factor in a cast of actors where many aren’t particularly well-known even now aside from some of the supporting roles, most notably Ian Holm as Abrahams’s coach Sam Mussabini, and a director whose filmography shows Chariots of Fire as the obvious highlight, and I’m not that surprised that the only thing people remember from this one is the soundtrack which combines Gilbert and Sullivan songs with electronic and string instruments to tell the story. To be fair, that soundtrack is rather good, but this is such an odd duck of a movie. It’s in no way bad or anything. In fact, it’s quite good, but it just seems to be doing things its own way for its own reasons. I really don’t know what else to say about it aside from how unusual of a sports movie it struck me.
Grade: B+
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