**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nigel Havers, Cheryl Campbell
screenplay by Colin Welland
directed by Hugh Hudson
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Crushed by the upset win at this year's Oscars, a critic friend of mine bemoaned the fact that "until the Earth crashes into the sun, Crash will have won Best Picture." I couldn't help thinking of that while watching Chariots of Fire, a film that would have been forgotten long ago had it not copped its own surprise Oscar in 1981. I still can't wrap my head around its slipping through the cracks: though there's an awesome professionalism at work, it's remote and inhuman enough to push you far outside the action, making it seem as if its rather primitive story is being viewed by astronauts looking in the opposite direction. The film is so obsessed with the dead surfaces of period detail that it winds up stifling its simple underdog narrative. Watching the virtuous come out on top isn't much fun when the filmmakers appear to be thinking of anything other than that triumph over whatever.
You'd think a movie about a Jew (Ben Cross, as Harold Abrahams) and a Scot (Ian Charleson, as Eric Liddell) becoming the cream of the 1924 English Olympic team would be spittle in the eye of classic Britannica. No such luck: from the first frames, it's obvious that Chariots of Fire has seized on the selling points of vintage sets and costumes that are instant signifiers of the Lion's pride. Worse, it's of a certain, upper-crust stripe, meaning that no popular music or other rumblings of the Jazz Age are in evidence. Gilbert and Sullivan receive a spin on the soundtrack, but they're rendered in lugubrious performances that lack any sense of fun or spontaneity; the rest is Blake's "Jerusalem", classical filler, and, of course, that austere Vangelis music you couldn't avoid for most of 1981. Nobody's here to have fun–they're here for the serious business of looking at Britain in its untarnished glory.
And by that I mean a Britain isolated from its less creditable behaviour. Great care was taken to isolate any anti-Semitic statements from blackening the Union Jack: the mass of Empire bric-a-brac overwhelms the few scenes of bigotry so as to void them; in fact, there's so little mention of Abrahams's backstory that you have to wonder. Liddell receives cursory mention on the back of some lushly-grassed glen, but the film conveniently shifts the attention from culture to religion. Where Abrahams's trajectory means proving the anti-Semites (there are three) very wrong, Liddell gets his freak on by not running on the Sabbath and generally acting insufferably pure. Everybody quite rightly thinks it's nutty for Liddell to give up an Olympic heat for religious reasons, but this is the kind of movie for which reason is second to Defiance of the Odds, thus his silliness rises to the top of the class.
Chariots of Fire would have dried up and blown away were it not for the oppressive genius of Hugh Hudson. His ability to drop a ton of sets and cinematography on the most cursory of moments anchors it more firmly than a less adept director might have. Unfortunately, his enrolment in the Ridley Scott School of commercial direction has resulted in a look as attractive as it is pointless. The ultimate success of the film lies in Hudson's ability to render it completely abstract: one barely notices the actual plot in the wake of his ability to compose a long shot to ends mere mortals cannot say. His employment of slo-mo (and that damn Vangelis score) during the race scenes is all about turning high adrenaline into underwater elegance, and to the unschooled it might even look like art. Indeed, the whole film more or less resides underwater, to be viewed by snorkelled visitors who find its goings-on infinitely fascinating but no less alien.
THE DVD
Presenting the movie in widescreen for the first time on home video in North America, Warner's Two-Disc Special Edition reissue of Chariots of Fire is excellent. The 1.85:1, 16×9-enhanced image offers beautifully modulated and surprisingly vivid colour for a film that's an infinitude of browns and greys, though fine detail is a hair too soft. The Dolby Digital 5.1 remix is similarly nuanced, rife with unusual cues harmoniously blended to surround you with ambiance. Extras are as follows:
DISC ONE
Feature Commentary with Hugh Hudson
Hudson proves to be all business when it comes to his commentary, which is refreshingly focused and on-issue. He remarks that Lindsay Anderson was terrified in his first dramatic role (opposite Sir John Gielgud!) and gives a surprising amount of technical information on a scene-by-scene basis. Alas, he's also highly credulous of the material, pointing out obvious plot points and patting himself on the back for the film's mild exposé of anti-Semitism.
DISC TWO
"Wings on their Feet: The Making of Chariots of Fire" (27 mins.)
A gassy, sentimental recollection of the production, full of slack-jawed awe for very mundane ideas. Screenwriter Colin Welland starts things off with the astonishing remark that "we didn't want it to be seen as a period piece." Producer David Puttnam sees him and raises the idea that working-class Welland and upper-crust Hudson were supposed to balance each other out. It's mostly back-patting from there.
"Chariots of Fire: A Reunion" (19 mins.)
Hudson, Puttnam, DP David Watkin, and cast members Nigel Havers and Nicholas Farrell offer better recollections than are featured in the retrospective. Puttnam kicks things off by locating Liddell's story in an ancient history of the Olympics, the cast members offer hilarious accounts of people puking at the running auditions, and a supporting character is revealed to have been created entirely out of his real-life namesake's letters.
Additional Scenes (6 mins.)
This includes the "Cricket in the Ballroom" sequence deleted from American prints; it's a vastly superior set-up to the one used in the Yank version, which Hudson will be happy to tell you in an optional commentary for the scene. Other elisions find Gielgud and Anderson waxing melancholic about the Great War and Liddell stating his religious case to a woman in a restaurant.
Screen Tests for Cross and Charleson (4 mins. both), who have two scenes apiece to make an impression (and do), join Chariots of Fire's theatrical trailer in rounding out the second platter and the set proper.
124 minutes; R; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9 + DVD-5; Region One; Warner
