Beautifully crafted and still relevant today

Rating: 8/10 (5 May 2000)

It's hard to remember that in 1981 things like slow motion replays were not used by everybody, nor was the use of synthesised music in period pieces (or classical music in scifi epics either).
Chariots of Fire was quite a groundbreaker at the time. Technically the film is quite brilliant. The editing just raises the film to another level, especially Eric Liddell's speech at Church which is intercut with the races, and the use of slow motion replays, which do become a bit overdone unfortunately. The themes are universal and still relevant today, especially when we enter the next millenium with the 2000 Olympics, and compare what they have become with what they were back in 1924, before tv, before radio, before professionalism in sport.
It's a look at racism and the burning desire to win for one's race, at ideas of national pressures brought to bear on individuals and what we 'ought' to be prepared to do for our country, at how people are differently motivated to sacrifice a normal life in pursuit of glory, the advent of sport as a business, and how winning changes everything.
The script allows us to view some of today's sporting conundrums by looking at sport in the past. It also allows for fine characterisations, such as those of Abrahams (Ben Cross), his coach Mussabini (Ian Holm) and the deliciously overdrawn British Olympics Committee led by the Prince of Wales (David Yelland). The screenplay has a fun time with the irony of Wales' speech to Liddell about 'duty' and 'honour', fourteen years before he abdicates to marry Wallis Simpson.
I found it to be a rich and beautifully crafted film that is still satisfying after many viewings, and still has implications for modern sport. The film is solidly English and stereotypes American athletes, but is not above taking a dig at Oxbridge elitism and the hypocrisy of those who just want to win, but don't want to be seen to want to win.

I would not say that the film advocates professionalism over the amateur code. I feel it shows sport as on the threshold of a great and probably inevitable change, for better or worse, and sporting bodies must either adapt if they want to win, or gracefully bow out.
I give this film 8 out of 10. It's not historically accurate, but then it is a film, not a documentary. Even documentaries play around with the 'truth' in search of angles.
Vangelis' score is magnificent, the performances all round are solid, and the story is fascinating.