Stories From the Silver Screen: Chariots of Fire

General Ulysses S. Grant, who, on military matters, was an undoubted expert, knew next to nothing about music, once claiming to have known only two tunes. “One of them is ‘Yankee Doodle,’” he confessed. “And the other isn’t.”

He and I, I’m afraid, are not so far apart. I too know only one tune, and it isn’t “Yankee Doodle.” In fact, it’s the theme song from “Chariots of Fire,” which is the next story I wish to tell in this series of great movies. And straightaway the most immediate and striking feature of the movie is the music that gives us the theme for it, imparting the atmosphere in which the story may be told. Wave upon wave of gorgeous sound, as it were, filling the space where the action is set. Revealing the deep paradox found at the heart of all great music, succinctly described by Victor Hugo. “Music,” he said, “expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”

If he’s right, and I’ve no reason to think otherwise, then the only way to really see “Chariots of Fire” is through the medium of the music that surrounds it, in which it is immersed, even as it defies our best efforts to say anything about it. Yet, at the same time, we mustn’t remain silent! Indeed, God himself has not remained silent, for, as Joseph Ratzinger reminds us in a tantalizing formulation, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word burst into song.”

Perhaps the artist-musician behind the movie, the Greek composer Vangelis Papathanassiou, has shown us a way out. If music is a sonic event, which is to say, the sound of air moving through time, then the soundtrack he has put together is truly inspired, for it provides the most apt accompaniment to the undulating rhythm and movement of the runners as we watch them, near the beginning, splashing joyously along the beach at Broadstairs while training for the Paris Olympics of 1924. How wonderfully his music pulsates throughout the whole length and breadth of this lovely and moving film!

That was the year, by the way, they competed. But the story itself begins several years before, just after the end of the Great War that left millions dead and an entire civilization in ruins. A whole generation of young men, and the loved ones they left behind, blighted by war and the bitter disillusion that followed. Among those who survived, however, or were too young at the time to fight, are the characters in the film, the young athletes whom we first encounter as students at Cambridge, one of whom is Harold Abrahams, son of an immigrant Jew from Lithuania. Who will need no little courage to overcome not a few prejudices embedded in England’s class system, not the least being antisemitism. Given his extraordinary gifts as an athlete, along with ample amounts of that wonderful Yiddish quality called chutzpah, he will succeed.

The other is a Scot named Eric Liddell, son of missionaries in China, equally blessed with athletic prowess but not, as it happens, a student at Cambridge. The two will compete most fiercely in the races that will decide the team Britain sends to Paris. They each qualify and will each carry medals in triumph back home.

Two outsiders, then, who, if they are to reach for greatness, for the stars above, must learn to overcome certain obstacles thrown in their way, societal pressures preventing their ascent. Which, in order to do so, will require no little magnanimity, or greatness of spirit, an ancient virtue aiming always at the highest possibilities of human excellence. Aristotle called it “the crown of the virtues,” the capstone on which human achievement may finally rest.

But each is very differently driven in his respective pursuit of so lofty an end. Abrahams is determined on greatness largely for himself, as a way of validating his own identity, his need to be accepted on his own terms, not by the standards set by class or ethnicity, which are alien and would thwart his ambition. The opening scene at Cambridge, for instance, in which he becomes the first ever to circle the courtyard in the time it takes the clock to strike twelve, beginning at the first chime, vividly illustrates the point that he will not be defined by others, that he will defy the odds and not be defeated.

Liddell, of course, is moved by an entirely different set of rhythms, animated by a music not of this world. It is divine grace that propels his spirit, moves his limbs. It is the desire to please God, to whom all the glory is due, that gives meaning and purpose to his life. And that to run well, that to experience the sheer exhilaration of the race, is not about winning, but about worship, of giving oneself wholly to God. All his actions, therefore, are intended as an oblation, an offering of such gifts as he has back to God, who had first given them to him.

“I believe that God made me for a purpose,” he tells his sister. “He made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure.” She, of course, rather wishes he weren’t quite so fast, and would instead return at once to China and take up missionary work. And he will, in due course, do exactly that. But he will not be denied such pleasures as only God can give, and so he chooses to run.

In the meantime, he will be put to the test, which, in his case, will not be physical, not a matter of mere endurance or strength, but moral. It will not consist of earning this or that medal pinned proudly upon his chest, but whether or not he will race at all. Only if he can meet that challenge, the most exacting of all, will he be worthy of the prize. It is perhaps the most important litmus test of his life and character. Will he agree to race on the Sabbath, or not? That is the question. If the only available day on the schedule falls on the Sabbath, and all the powers that be, including the Prince of Wales himself, are urging him to do so, how will he decide?

Only if he answers that question in a way that does justice to God, will he be worthy of the prize that matters most. “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength,” he tells the congregation at a Church of Scotland service in Paris that Sunday afternoon. “They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary.”

See the movie and find out. You won’t be disappointed. Oh, yes, and there were no chariots set on fire while filming it.