"The pursuit of excellence"

Rating: 9/10 (28 October 2011)

The 1980s were a time now looked back on by many as rather embarrassing and misguided, usually in terms of fashion and music, but no less so in the motion picture industry. This was, after all, that brief era when it was acceptable for a period film to be scored with synths. Enthusiastically modernist as it undoubtedly is, I still love 80s cinema for its naïve charm, and the fact that beneath that cheesy veneer still lurked movies of sincerity and sophistication. Chariots of Fire is exemplary in this case.
It would be hard for anyone to guess the movie had the makings of a classic though. Sports movies are generally dull (unless they're about boxing), and a bunch of British runners in the 1920s hardly sounds inspiring. And yet the Colin Welland screenplay is a thing of real intelligence and poignancy. It is not, like many sports pictures, basically a drama with the sport as a backdrop – it really is all about the running. And yet other issues and preoccupations of the characters are shot through it – Liddell's devoutness, Abrahams's struggle against prejudice and his seemingly at-odds love of performing Gilbert and Sullivan, and Lindsay's sacrifice to allow Liddell to run. A few liberties are taken with historical accuracy, but these are only for the sake of fine-tuning the dramatic power, without slipping into complete misrepresentation. What we get is an intimate story of credible figures displaying admirable dedication and camaraderie.
The two lead players here – Ben Cross and Ian Charleson – were unknowns at the time and they have remained fairly obscure. And while neither of them is exactly outstanding (the roles don't really call for such a thing) they are fully adequate. Cross is genuinely able to sing and play the piano, but also convinces as an athlete. Charleson comes across as a supremely sedate and thoughtful man, and has a kind of charisma that makes him captivating despite his calmness. The biggest treats however are amongst the supporting players, a bevy of Britain's finest character actors. Ian Holm is especially impressive. Often chomping a cigar, his face half-hidden by a straw hat, the personality of Mussabini all comes through in those little gestures and mad energy. There are also memorable bit parts from a sniffy Richard Griffiths and a humourless John Gielgud.
Like his stars, director Hugh Hudson is by no means amazing, but he gets the job done. His slow-moving, constantly-roving camera helps to give the picture a nice flowing pace. His camera placement often seems almost arbitrary, with tops of heads cropped and so forth, but he seems to be giving an "in-the-thick-of-it" look, without resorting to the clunkiness of hand-held camera. At some of the most emotional moments, such as Holm's personal celebration of his protégé's win, he keeps well back from the action. This gives a kind of respectful distance and allows the power of the moment to come across in body language rather than facial expression.
But I feel the picture's greatest strength lies in the way it is all put together. There is this continual, breathtaking interweaving of ideas through music, for example, the singing of a church choir plays over one of Charleson's races, or "He is an Englishman" playing as Cross trains after his confrontation with the anti-Semitic deans. Slow-motion, usually a rather trite and obvious technique, is used here to such smooth and subtle effect, with some clever mixes of slow image and normal speed sound, or cutting from slo-mo runners to normal speed crowds. It all helps to pull what is essentially a rather disparate plot (Cross and Charleson barely have any scenes together), and bring out the tones and themes in a way that is purely cinematic. This is even where that seemingly inappropriate Vangelis score comes in – it has a kind of transcendent quality that makes its anachronism irrelevant. On the surface, this may look like a lot of 80s "hi-tec"ness guilding the dramatic lily, but it is all just another form of expression in this beautiful medium.