Artistically, Olympic ceremonies are strange beasts. Taking years to produce, they are performed only once, with an enormous cast of amateurs.
Artistically, Olympic ceremonies are strange beasts. Taking years to produce, they are performed only once, with an enormous cast of amateurs. They are simultaneously global television spectaculars and theatrical productions, performed in cavernous sport stadiums.
They must invent a script that translates the abstract gobbledegook of Olympic philosophies and the host nation's idealised image into a largely wordless dramatic narrative using music, dance, mime and circus skills combined with a firework display and a flashing light show.
Building on Leni Riefenstahl's marching blueprint and getting souped-up by the Americans in 1984 with the showbusiness pizzazz of arena pop concerts, ceremonies have evolved a kind of universal language and aesthetic: bright, neon colours; tightly choreographed, synchronised bodies creating geometric shapes; futuristic set designs with tiered central stages; doves, flames, pom poms and cute children.
Their drama lies in their gloss and shine, their inhuman scale and shape transcending mundane reality.
Danny Boyle, the director, might have kept the flames and cute children and there were plenty of showpiece bangs during the final rehearsal but in every other respect his opening ceremony ripped up the rule book.
This was about punk rather than pomp. His palette for The Isles of Wonder wasn't primary brights but mud hues and matts, a Lowry-ish smudge of grass greens, industrial greys and even black. There were more cloth caps and bloomers than Lycra and sequins.
In place of doves, there were cows and ducks. Instead of a glittering space age set, Boyle filled the stadium with earth and bricks, conjuring centrepieces out of lopsided hillocks, chimney stacks, coal mines, hospitals and red brick houses.
His view of British history was quietly subversive, stripped of royal pageantry. This was the story of migration and immigration, protest and rebellion. The working classes were shown rolling the grass away from under their feet. A carousel of Jarrow marchers, pearly kings and carnival queens swirled around the arena.
Compared with the usually banal platitudes of global togetherness that goes on at an Olympics ceremony, this seemed politically charged.
However, Boyle was not trying to make some agitprop point. The working class, Irish Catholic boy from Bury, who came of age during the punk decade, has made a career out of depicting the travails of the working classes with sly humour and subversive surrealism.
Boyle's films have so often been about outsiders rather than individuals, whether that was Glasgow junkies, Thai beach bums or Indian slum kids.
This ceremony was also about Boyle the filmmaker and it was steeped in his signature moves: rapid montages, widescreen angles, fast zooms. More than anything it was a love letter to British film, TV and music, from Mary Poppins to Harry Potter, Lionel Bart to Soul 2 Soul. With his musical partners Underworld it paid homage to hits of the past 50 years spliced with the energy of the rave culture. This was the section that brought the whole show to life, and made me proud of modern Britain.
I'm not sure it all worked. Without pushing those traditional ceremonial buttons so cravenly Boyle traded the punch of a Lady Gaga-style arena show for a more opaque experience.
Kenneth Branagh is a fine actor but lacks the feral magnetism of Mark Rylance. Without powerful lead characters, the show sometimes lost focus combined with an almost baffling level of visual detail.
The pacing wavered and I have no idea what the rest of the world will make of shire horses or men in top hats gathered spouting Shakespeare. They might think it is the strangest episode of Downton Abbey they have seen.
Nonetheless, this opening ceremony was original, cool, intense and utterly compelling. More importantly underneath the old punk snarl, Boyle is a generous director unafraid of sentimentality or unabashed joy, and he filled this ceremony with heart and soul.
It was the hardest directorial job in the world but Boyle did us all proud.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}