"Chariots of Fire" is a movie about two British young men, who came from different background, a determined Jew and devoted Christian compete in the Olympics Games on 1924. The director of this movie used real life incident to shoot it. It was quite an impressed movie because it is consider a part of history especially to those youngster these days as it is quite an old movie.
In the movie, Eric Liddell, a devoted Christian and a rugby player was encouraged by Sandy, his friend to run again. While the Scot citizen having a welcoming home party for Eric and his family, Sandy use this chance to ask Eric to run to show his paces to Scotland. And through this race, Eric's father and Sandy can see that Eric still has the passion to run. As expected, he won the race too in Scotland. Later Sandy and Eric's persuade him to run again for Olympic.
In the movie, Eric said this before, that he feel God's pleasure while he run and when he win, he honor God. I think, as an audience, the motivation to make Eric to run is from his beliefs to God, because he believe that God made him for a purpose. God motivates him to run in every races. For a devoted Christian like Eric, running on a Sabbath Day, which is Sunday, is against God's law, because Sabbath Day is a day to worship the Lord. Although the Olympic race is in Sabbath Day, Eric still refuse to run despite the objection of the Olympic committee, because of his faith to God. Fortunately, Lord Lindsay suggested to change Eric's race to 400m run, the problem solved and everyone agreed with it.
Usually, for an athlete who are trained to run 100m is difficult to run 400m, because of the length of the race, their stamina and different strategy used in the race. However, because of Eric's faith in God, he run as fast as he can until he can see the end of the tape. Plus, his strong rival from USA, Taylors underestimate Eric because of his coach's word. I think that these are the reason why he win the race.
For another character, Harold Abraham, is a determined Jew, a fast runner and also a good singer. Harold is known as a fast runner and no one beat him in the race until Eric's appearance. In the beginning when Harold run, he run to win in no matter what cost but within the rules. If the races he run did not win, he will quit. This showed that Harold is a very competitive guy and must hold his place firmly. But when he and Eric met in the race, he lost to Eric and he also gain fear of losing within himself.
Harold cannot accept the fact that he lose to Eric, because he is the best until now and did not lose before. Moreover, he thinks that he cannot improve anymore. But at this time, Mr. Mussabini approach him, encourage him and give him personal training, because all this time Harold was trained alone for every race and did not receive proper training. In order to beat Eric and other fast runner in the next race, Harold trained very hard. After going through Mr. Mussabini's hard training, Harold seems to improve his running. However, the fear of losing still with Harold. During the Olympic Games when Harold receiving body massage from his coach, he confessed his feeling to his friend that he is afraid of win after all what had happened.
Just on that day, where Harold has his final race in Olympic, he received a letter from his coach, encouraging him, support him to run and also gave him a charm, which his coach's father swore by it. The encouragement of his coach and his friends help Harold to overcome the fear in himself, and run all his might and win the race.
No comments:
Post a Comment