Creative Sensemaker: What to read, watch and listen to this weekend

Welcome to the latest Creative Sensemaker from Tortoise Media.

Even as we continue to absorb the full impact of Sunday’s Euros Final, the time has come to prepare for another momentous international sporting event. Next week, the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, delayed from last year – will be held behind closed doors, as Japan’s capital reels from a severe COVID-19 spike and spectators are largely barred from the 339 events.

To get you in the mood for perhaps the strangest Olympic Games yet, this week’s Creative Sensemaker is a selection of movies dramatising or documenting the greatest sporting show on earth:

Race (2016, VOD)
An underrated gem, Stephen Hopkins’ biopic about Jesse Owens and his conquest of the 1936 Berlin Olympics – at which he won four gold medals – is anchored by Stephen James’s fine lead performance. Jeremy Irons is also excellent as Avery Brundage, the International Olympic Committee member who must act as middleman between the athlete and the outraged Nazi leadership.

I Am Bolt (2016, VOD)
One of the greatest sporting documentaries ever made, Benjamin and Gabe Turner’s film unpeels the layers of legend that have accrued around Usain Bolt to reveal the intensely likeable, sometimes mercurial, but always committed human being within. His eight Olympic gold medals may be notionally dwarfed by Michael Phelps’s 23. But – as the only sprinter to win the 100m and 200m at three successive Games (Beijing, London, Rio) – Bolt surely deserves to be hailed as the greatest Olympian of all time. His absence from the Games, for the first time since Sydney in 2000, will be felt by all.

Tokyo Olympiad (1965, Olympic website)
When the Japanese authorities commissioned the acclaimed director Kon Ichikawa to make a film about the 1964 Games, they had no idea that he’d produce an exquisite arthouse documentary that strips away all the propaganda, hoopla and cliche, and captures instead the aesthetic majesty and psychological drama of world-class sport. Ichikawa’s film relies on a shrewd focus upon a number of key stories within the Games: notably the Ethiopian Abebe Bikila’s world record-beating victory in the marathon, the first time an Olympic athlete had successfully defended that title.

When the Japanese authorities commissioned the acclaimed director Kon Ichikawa to make a film about the 1964 Games, they had no idea that he’d produce an exquisite arthouse documentary that strips away all the propaganda, hoopla and cliche, and captures instead the aesthetic majesty and psychological drama of world-class sport. Ichikawa’s film relies on a shrewd focus upon a number of key stories within the Games: notably the Ethiopian Abebe Bikila’s world record-beating victory in the marathon, the first time an Olympic athlete had successfully defended that title.

Chariots Of Fire (1981, VOD)
Forty years after its release, Hugh Hudson’s Oscar-winning account of the 1924 Paris Olympics, and the respective struggles of athletes Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, has held up well. And not just for the legendary Vangelis-scored run on the beach. It is, as it happens, Joe Biden’s favourite film. 

One Day In September (1999, VOD)
Kevin Macdonald – who is the grandson of Emeric Pressburger and has proceeded to make a series of superb movies ranging from The Last King Of Scotland (2006) to Whitney (2018) – scooped the Academy Award for Best Documentary with this modern masterpiece. In unflinching detail, Macdonald shows the terrible sequence of events that ended with 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics, being massacred.

Salute (2008, VOD)
One of the most unforgettable images in Olympic history shows the US 200m athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, giving the Black Power salute from the medallists’ podium at the 1968 Games in Mexico City. Matt Norman’s film is a fascinating analysis of a moment of great daring that triggered a global controversy. To this day, IOC rules bar all acts that are categorised as political protests, which means that taking the knee may become an issue of contention in Tokyo (the IOC appears to have offered some scope for athletes to do so at the starting blocks  – though the rules remain strict concerning medal ceremonies).

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013, Bluray)
Hard to get hold of, but definitely worth the effort, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s epic tells the extraordinary story of Milkha Singh, the ‘Flying Sikh’, who represented India at the 1956, 1960 and 1964 Games as a 400m competitor. His life story was embroiled with the 1947 Partition of India, which left him orphaned, and the entanglement of sport and politics that it bequeathed. Singh died last month aged 91 in Chandigarh, after contracting COVID-19.

Foxcatcher (2014, VOD)
Few films capture so well the immense human cost – in this case, disastrous – of the competitive spirit that underpins the Olympics. John du Pont (Steve Carrell) recruits Mark and Dave Schultz (Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo), gold-medal winning wrestlers at the 1984 Games to prepare American competitors for Seoul in 1988. Based on a true story, Bennett Miller’s movie is as compelling as it is dark.

My Way To Olympia (2013, Vimeo)
‘I think sports suck and the Paralympics is a stupid idea’: so says director Niko von Glasow in the opening minutes of this excellent documentary about the preparation of disabled athletes for the 2012 London Games. A disciple of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Glasow (who is himself disabled due to the side-effects of thalidomide) approaches his subject with admirable detachment and wit, and the film is all the stronger for that.

Without Limits (1998, Prime Video)
A forgotten curio, Without Limits merits inclusion because of the fine performances of Billy Cruddup as Steve Prefontaine, the US distance runner, who competed at the 1972 Games and was tipped for glory in Montreal in 1976 before his untimely death; and Donald Sutherland as his coach Bill Bowerman, who went on to co-found Nike, Inc. It is also one of only four films directed by Robert Towne, who, now aged 86, is widely regarded as one of the greatest screenwriters of all time.

….also, thanks to Tortoise Executive Editor, Peter Hoskin, who recommends this lavish, 32-disc Criterion Blu-ray collection of 53 Olympic documentaries, covering the Games from 1912 to 2012. The completism is matched by tremendous attention to detail, 4K restorations and extras including a 216-page hardback book.

That’s all for now. Have a great week.

Best wishes,

Matt d’Ancona
Editor and Partner
Tortoise Media
@MatthewdAncona