Chariots of Fire (1981)

I have a confession, I forgot that today was the day I was supposed to watch my "Force Fed Film" from Puneet, and so when I got home from work I threw on another classic to continue my theme of the week. I realized half way through I was supposed to be watching Super High Me, so I started it as soon as my first movie ended. But that leaves me with another movie to write about, and that's the 1981 classic Chariots of Fire. This is another movie I new embarrassingly little about. I actually thought it was going to be about chariot racing and be set in ancient Rome or something. Turns out, other than the racing, it's not about that at all. You'll find my full impressions of this famous title after a quick dash across the jump break!


So it turns out Chariots of Fire is primarily about two British runners competing to get into and win the 1924 Olympic games which were held in France. Eric Lidell (Ian Charleson) is a Scotsman and is racing because he sees his speed as a gift from God and since his family is extremely religious, he feels he is honouring God by using the gift given to him. The other man, Harold Abrahms (Ben Cross) is Jewish and runs to prove that he's just as good if not better than all the people that look down on him because he had a different religion. Early on, Harold, who has never lost before, loses to Eric and it stuns him. From then on he starts a fierce training regiment to become faster. Eventually it all leads to the Olympics and the ultimate test for both men.

A short race between Harold and his friend Andrew

While this is a classic movie, I'm not exactly sure what made it so famous. I was boooooored by this movie. The production values all seemed high enough, it all looked good and the acting was fine, but the story just meandered and wondered lazily about. There are really only 2 characters that matter, but sometimes it would go off and follow some other side characters and I hardly knew who they were.

The only time I was suddenly engaged was right at the end when Harold Abrahms has his last Olympic race and it shows his focus and the race is actually exciting and intense, unlike every other race in the rest of the movie. I liked that they put his lane in focus and highlighted it and all the other lanes were darkened and fuzzy. I'm not sure why they never did this kinda of thing for any of the other races. Also it was this one that was actually slow motion before we knew the outcome. This actually made it kind of thrilling to see.

Running at the 1924 Olypics

Most of the races would be shown in realtime, so only about 10 seconds for a dash, and we'd see who won. Then they'd show the race again but this time from different angles and in slow motion. But this wasn't exciting because I already knew who would win. Why were they showing this to me again 4 more times from different angles?

Also, what's with Ian Charleson's face when he races? I suppose it's supposed to look like he's going so fast he's losing it? I have no idea, but whenever he ran, he would always open his mouth towards the end and kinda go crazy looking.

Ian Charleson as Erik Lidell looking crazy as usual

I really can't think of much more to say. The races were rarely entertaining, the rest of the film was extremely slow and boring, and I really didn't care about anything that was going on. I can't say this is a good film to watch, and I can't even think of a good reason why someone would watch it. Maybe an Olympics history buff would like this? I'll never know.