London has an absolutely impossible act to follow. The Opening Ceremonies in 2008 was possibly - beware, a grand statement is approaching - the single greatest public spectacle of any kind of all time (if you think I'm hyping, name one better).
So apparently they are going in the opposite direction. In a stadium half the size of any Olympic Stadium I've ever seen, they seem to be going for Village Green. The children's choirs are beautiful. How wonderful that Ireland has so thoroughly adopted a song whose lyrics were written by a British lawyer.
Kenneth Branagh emerges dressed as Abraham Lincoln and exclaims a passage from The Tempest. Several touring companies of productions of The Full Monty start drumming behind drummer Evelyn Glennie, looking quite enchantress-like, drumming standing up a la Mo Tucker.
A symbolic transformation takes place. The sod carpeting is taken up, raping the lush Village Green into an industrial hellscape. Proletarian abuse is stirringly performed before our very eyes. Then a pause to honor those who tragically died in possibly the stupidest war in history. Then random people mosey onto the field in various garbs - British redcoats, Sgt. Pepper uniforms, what have you...
The choreography is spirited, but loose, hardly precision motion. Danny Boyle, the movie director charged with planning the ceremonies, clearly knew he couldn't beat Beijing, so he is just going for a chaotic melange of evocative images, and moderately successfully.
A ring is forged by the factory at center stage, joined by four more rings flying in from the edges of the stadium, rising above the crowd to form the first representation of the great Olympic emblem.
And now, a short film by Danny Boyle. A group of Brazilian children on a tour of Buckingham Palace become distracted by the entrance of James Bond - Daniel Craig, not the real one (Sean Connery) - who is led into the office of a little gray haired woman at an exquisite rolltop desk. Yes, it is. Seriously. She's in it. She's in the movie. Queen Elizabeth - not Jeannette Charles.
She leads Mr. Bond into a helicopter that flies through London to Olympic Stadium, switching between the daytime lighting of the film to the twilight lighting of the live shot in a continuity lapse that would embarrass Ed Wood. Bond and someone in the same dress QEII was wearing jump from the airplane and parachute, not into the stadium, but presumably landing in the outer concourse from where the real Queen Elizabeth enters, making her entrance with Prince Philip. I guess Bond got hung up in a tree.
And now a tribute to Socialized Medicine, to the tune of Tubular Bells, actually played by Mike Oldfield (good to see him still alive and kicking).
Oy, the banter between Meredith Viera and Matt Lauer. There's a reason I don't watch Thanksgiving Day parades any more, and at least part of it is the insipid narration.
I'm all for single-payer, but seriously??? A whole production number about NHS??? At the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games????
J.K. Rowling reading from J.M. Barrie - very nice. Now pantomime evil characters being chased away by a bunch of Mary Poppins, resulting in an insipid triumphal dance. Jeez, bring back Voldemort. A bizarre mixture of images lurching between sappy and disturbing, never charming or fun or interesting.
AHHH!! THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE NIGHT SO FAR!! Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean playing the one droning synthesizer note in the wonderful theme from Chariots of Fire, the greatest movie about the Olympics ever made, and naturally drifting into Beanian goofiness, falling into a reverie of Mr. Bean in the famous seaside running image from Chariots of Fire. Comedy in a stadium is impossible, but that was fracking HILARIOUS!
And the one contribution of England to modern culture greater than its comedy - rock music - is represented in a hash of too-brief clips and bad choreography, with the Sex Pistols appallingly averted through a cynically-timed commercial. The story is told through a hackneyed love story between two teenage kids who were specially selected by the producers to become international superstars starting today. Yeah, tell that to Vicki McClure.
All the stuff that comes before the march of nations into an Olympic Opening Ceremonies is a mixed bag. In Athens, there was a liquid stream of semi-erotic images representing the history of Western culture. In Beijing, there was one extraordinary precision performance after another. In London, it's just a weird stream of things about England that Danny Boyle seems to like.
David Beckham drives the Olympic flame along the Thames in a speedboat, which seems a bit like cheating to me.
We seem to be doomed to have to listen to Ryan Seacrest doing the studio interviews in these Olympics. This would be okay if Bob Costas is freed to actually cover actual events, at which he is one of the very best in the business, instead of mouldering in the studio doing continuity links. I doubt that will happen, though.
After the Parade of Nations, the Arctic Monkeys sing - of all Beatle songs - "Come Together", confirming that the role of sex in the Olympic games is now indelibly etched into its DNA.
At this point, the ceremony gives way to ritual and protocol. The great miler Sebastian Coe gives a dignified speech. He introduces IOC President Jacques Rogge, who gives a gracious speech. The Queen gives the traditional declaration opening the games. The Olympic flag is brought in by a group of prominent humanitarians. The flag passes Muhammad Ali, bless his soul. A representative group of military personnel take the flag to the pole, and it is raised to the tune of the Olympic anthem.
David Beckham guides a powerboat along the Thames towards Olympic Stadium, bearing the Olympic torch. The Torch is relayed by a Jaye Bailey, a British soccer player to Steven Redgrave, a British rower, who begins the final relay into the stadium. Redgrave hands the torch off to a group of young athletes, who take a lap of the stadium together, handing off the torch to each other. They greet a group of former British Olympians, including my choice to light the cauldron, Daley Thompson. The old folks hand the young 'uns their own torches. The kids then move to the center and light a ring of small torches.
I'm not crazy about 7 no-name youths lighting the cauldron. One of the great moments of excitement about the Opening Ceremonies is "Who's going to light the cauldron?" I remember how exciting and moving it was to see Mohammad Ali, shaking visibly from his Parkinsons, determinedly lighting the cauldron in 1996. There's enough symbolism about the Promise of Youth in Olympic ceremonies. Get Daley Thompson out there to light the damn cauldron.
The ring of torches rise up to form a single torch, kind of a Blooming Onion in reverse. Then a fireworks show, which is never as interesting on TV as it is in person.
And then Paul McCartney sings "The End" and "Hey Jude". He doesn't have that upper register like he used to. Who gives a shit? He's a fuckin' Beatle. He has infinite credit with me. It's encouraging to me to see the number of young people who know the lyrics and are singing this 44 year old song along with Old Paulie, and not just the "Na-na-na" part.
Let the Games begin.