In honour of Olympics drama

It’s that time in sports history again as all eyes turn to Paris for the 33rd edition of the summer Olympic Games. With its focus on athletic prowess, limit-pushing, team spirit, nation building, heroism and failure, the Olympics have always proved rich source material for onscreen drama.

This week we take a look at three films from the long cinematic history of the event, first enacted by the Greeks 3,000 years ago and then revived for the modern industrial era by French educator Pierre De Coubertin in the late 19th century, when the first version of the games as we know them was held in Athens in 1896.

An anthology documentary of one of the most infamous editions, a schmaltzy but handsomely executed drama of Olympic glory achieved in the face of class and religious prejudice, and a solid dramatisation of Winter Olympics triumph against the backdrop of the Cold War are all here to get you in the mood for nationalist cheering and athletic hero worship.

The arthouse essential:

Visions of Eight - YouTube

An unusual departure for the International Olympics Committee’s public relations team, this anthology documentary comprised eight sequences shot by eight directors from various parts of the globe covering the events of the 1972 Olympics in Munich, differently. Now remembered for the tragic events that unfolded when the Israeli team were attacked by terrorists, the games also consisted of the usual athletic competitions, heights of individual achievement and lows of competitors whose long journey to get there ended in abject failure on the world’s biggest sporting stage.

Released in 1973, the film features sections directed by impish Czech comedy master Milos Forman, US New Wave pioneer Arthur Penn, Japanese stylist Kon Ichikawa, British independent auteur John Schlesinger and French humanist Claude Lelouch, among others.

Lelouch focuses his lens on the tear-jerking tragedies of those who missed out on eternal glory. Schlesinger is the only director to tangentially touch on the tragedy of the attack in his atmospheric ode to the challenges of the marathon. Penn lets the pole-vault craft its own dramatic arc in his slow-motion examination of its techniques; while Ichikawa (who had previously directed the official film for the 1964 Olympiad, considered by many to be one of the greatest sports films ever made) takes 34 cameras and trains them on every aspect of the 100m sprint in an effort to hammer home the link between the games’ most watched and challenging event and the rat race of modern life.

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The stone-cold classic: 

Chariots of Fire - Disney Plus

Hugh Hudson’s 1981 British nationalist sports drama was decidedly overrated and undeservedly rewarded at the time of its release in the early “ra ra” days of the Thatcher era. Stripped away of its Oscar wins and patriotic fervour however, it remains a solidly inspiring, technically well-executed heartstring-pulling sports drama. It examines the class and religious divisions of English society in the 1920s and the ways in which its protagonists must overcome these in order to achieve Olympic glory.

The story — drawing heavily on the Boys Own tradition of English youth literature — follows the challenges faced by two runners from different backgrounds as they strive for Olympic success in a class- and religion-divided 1920s England. Harold Abrahams is Jewish and determined to win a medal for the 100m and Eric Liddell is the son of a Scotts missionary whose discipline is the 400m. Together, and with lots of help from Vangelis’s famous soundtrack, they must run on the beach in slow-motion, overcome the stifling snobbery of the English school system, jeopardise their personal relationships in service of the greater goals of God and country, and come out exhausted but victorious on the other side.

It may not live up to the hype four decades later, but as a solid, well-made yet predictable sports heroism story, it does the job.

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The diamond in the rough: 

Miracle - Disney Plus

Most famous for the inspiring speech that Kurt Russel’s Herb Brooks gives his US hockey team ahead of their legendary Olympic final face-off with the great Cold War enemy, the USSR, Gavin O’Connor’s dramatisation of the legendary Winter Olympics encounter of the 1980s is a solid sports drama of underdog achievement.

Classically made with all the beats that you expect in these kind of films, it does benefit from a committed performance by Russell as the college hockey coach tasked with winning the sporting cold war on the ice when he’s hired as team USA’s coach for the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid. His own failings as an Olympic hopeful, two decades before, motivate him to take on the seemingly impossible task of turning twenty ordinary US boys into Olympian heroes.

It’s not exactly nuanced in its portrayal of the USSR nor in its blindly patriotic dedication to the idea of the US as the God-anointed good guys of democracy, but thanks to Russell and strong support by Patricia Clarkson and Noah Emmerich, it ultimately works well enough as a an inspirational, nostalgic, inspired-by-a-true story sports flick.

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