I remembered watching this quite a few years ago, but I couldn’t remember it well, and probably understood it even less well. Decided to give it another look, and also thought it might be a good one to write about for this blog.
Summary
This is one of those movies that’s based on real-life events and real-life people, though the movie makers did take liberties with the events. It’s set in England and Scotland in the years after World War I, then goes to France for the 2024 Olympic games.
This is an unusual movie, because it is about two different characters, each of equal importance to the overall story, and they do not even spend much time together on the screen.
The two men are Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell. They are both training to be a part of England’s 2024 Olympic track team, yet both men live very different lives and have very different reasons for wanting to compete. Abrahams is a Jewish man, and he fights against discrimination he experiences at his college. Liddell is the son of Christian missionaries who plans to return to the mission field, but also has a great desire to run and compete.
Cringe
Very little, if any. This was a very well-made movie, and it is little wonder it was so popular at the time it was released.
Interesting Aspects
The movie does well in balancing the stories of each of its two main characters. I would guess this was a difficult thing to do. Most movies I can think of usually have one main character, or even if there is a group of character one of them will be the main focus or the center of the story, with the others in the group maybe getting a brief bit of focus. Time is a big issue when telling a story in a movie, and the time limit just won’t allow for great development for all characters.
And it’s not even as if Abtahams and Liddell were protagonst/antagonist. There is a bit or rivalry, at least at the one point where they race each other, but it’s not a central conflict,, and at the Olumpics they don’t race against each other (at least in the movie; in real life, they did both run together in one race during the Olympics). They each have their own reasons for running, and they aren’t the normal cliche reasons we might expect from most such sport movies.
And this lack of conflict between the two main characters is one thing that sets this movie apart. It isn’t that there is no conflict for each character, but that their conflicts have different sources.
Abrahams sees himself as an outsider to the society he wants to get into. As he tells Sybil at their first dinner date, “They lead me to water, but they won’t let me drink”.He sees his Jewish heritage and race as something people use against him, seeing him as unfit and unacceptable solely because he’s Jewish. Yet we also see how his fellow students seem to accept him with little reservation, he seems to fit right in with them. He sees his running as a way of showing that he’s worthy of such high society, that he can fit in with them. As he says before his last Olympic race, this race is so important to him that’s as if winning it would “justify me whole existence”.
Liddell fights with trying to reconcile his love of running with his duties as a Christian minister and his desire to return to the mission field in China. When he increases his running practice to compete for the Olympics, his sister thinks that he’s losing focus, that his life has become more about running than about God. And, as he’s boarding the boat to go to France for the games, he learns that his races are to be held on a Sunday, a day he considers the Sabbath, and to his mind it would be sinful for him to run on a day to be devoted to God.
So, the story has two very different men pursuing the same goal for two very different reasons, and it doesn’t portray one is a bad light and the other in a good way. It makes the movie more thought-provoking than a normal good guy/bad guy story.
Sabbath
I know this is a thorny issue. My own views are that the Sabbath laws are not in effect for the church. For one thing, Sunday itself is not the original sabbath, as it’s not the seventh day of the week. And while there are indications in the New Testament that the churches regularly met on the day we call Sunday, there is no hint that this Sunday was considered some kind of Sabbath.
But I’m also of the opinion that it’s not my place to judge anyone who does want to keep a Sunday or a Sabbath, or keep Sunday as a Sabbath. Let the one who keeps Sunday in that way do so to the Lord, and let the one who doesn’t keep Sunday in that way also do so to the Lord. I offer no judgment against either side.
Stand Fast
So, I can respect Liddell’s decision to not run on Sunday, even if I may not completely agree with his theological reasons. If he considered racing on a Sunday to be sinful, then he was wise to not race.
I don’t think this movie could be considered a “Christian” movie, yet it portrays Liddell with a great amount of respect, as a man who was serious about his beliefs, and even willing to upset people, even important and powerful people, to stand by his convictions.
Btw in looking up some info about Liddell, it seems the movie took some liberties with this part of the story. In the movie, Liddell doesn’t learn about the races being scheduled for Sunday until he’s boarding the boat to go the games. But from a few sources, it seems that he knew about this scheduling problem beforehand, and decided to qualify instead for another race that wasn’t on Sunday.
At about the 26 minute mark,there is a scene worth noting. Liddell has run and won a race. It’s a rainy day, and after the race people are gathered on the track itself, several holding umbrellas, listening to Liddell give something like an inspirational speech or a sermonette.
Still, I wish this scene had been a bit better in one way. He’s speaking about faith, but he’s speaking as if the people need to look inside themselves, instead of to what God has spoken to us in the Bible. I don’t know how true this sermonette is to what the real Liddell would have spoken on such occasions.
Much later in the movie, at about 1:35, there is another scene. On the Sunday of the races, Liddell is in a church, a Church of Scotland located in Paris, and he’s reading a passage from Isaiah 40.
Learning
Christian movie makers would do well, I think, to watch this movie and try to learn what these movie makers did right. How can a Christian character be shown holding true to his conviction without it becoming cringy or even obnoxious? That Liddell stood his ground without making a bore of himself is one thing worth thinking about.
The point is, we can make movies that convey the Christian messages we want to convey, and we can do it without being preach or cringy or annoying. We can make good movies, movies that portray Christians as real people with real hardship and real obstacles. We can show them having real hardships, and we can have them deal these hardships through a quiet and solid faith, one that may well believe in miracles but also knows God can work things for our good even if His work on us does not involve miracles.
It’ll take effort. But that effort will be worth while, if our Christian movies can escape this horrid cringe-filled place they all too often occupy.
Conclusion
I think I could write a lot more about this movie, these is a lot in it worth thinking about. That’s probably why it’s one of the best movies ever made, and I’ll give it a solid and hearty recommendation.
