RIP Hugh Hudson, director of Chariots of Fire and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan...
Chariots may be his best-known film, but Greystoke looms larger in my life.
Hugh Hudson has passed away, at the age of 86.
The British filmmaker was best-known for directing 1981’s Chariots of Fire, which won four Oscars including Best Picture, had a phenomenally popular soundtrack by Vangelis, and gave Christians a hero to latch onto in the form of Eric Liddell, the missionary and athlete who “felt God’s pleasure” when he ran.
For me, however, Hudson will always be the man who directed 1984’s Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, a movie that was hugely important to me when I was a teenager.
A lot of that had to do with the fact that I skipped grades in 1983, when I was 12 years old. I not only skipped grades, I switched campuses—from Grade 7 at the elementary school to Grade 8 at the secondary school—and I did it in the middle of the school year. The adults told me I should do it, and I listened to them, but the whole experience was very disruptive, and it left me pining for the life and friends that I had left behind… So when Greystoke came along one year later, and told a story about a man who was raised by apes, and who is then told to leave the apes and join the human society where he “belongs”, and who then ultimately turns his back on human society and returns to the jungle in the movie’s final scene… Well, it spoke to me.
The movie meant so much to me that, when it came out on VHS, I spent something like a month’s worth of paper-route money just to buy the videotape. And when I began collecting movie soundtracks on CD just a few years later, I began a relentless search for the soundtrack album, which finally—finally—came out in 2010.
So, to mark Hudson’s passing, I figured I’d round up some of the things I’ve written about Greystoke over the years.
But first, before I get to that: It was only after hearing the news of Hudson’s passing that I realized the making and distribution of Chariots of Fire were featured quite prominently in two different dramas that came out just a few months ago, which may give you some sense as to how big a deal that film still is for some people:
Empire of Light, which premiered in September and is currently nominated for an Oscar for its cinematography, is set in a British movie theatre that hosts a regional premiere screening of Chariots of Fire in the early 1980s.
The Crown: Season 5, which came out in November, devotes an entire episode to Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed and his efforts to fit into British society, which include helping his son Dodi to put up some of the financing for Chariots of Fire. The episode even re-creates the famous run on the beach from the film’s opening credits, as the Fayeds watch the sequence being filmed.
It’s kind of funny to think that Chariots of Fire, a period piece about the 1924 Olympics that was made 57 years after the Olympics took place, is now itself the subject of period pieces that were made 41 years after the film came out. But anyhoo.
And now, for the Greystoke archives.
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