There are films which
touch you with their tenderness and leave you with a song in your hearts. And then
there are flicks which shock and jolt you out of stupor, sparking thoughts of
picking up cudgels against all that ail humanity and lasting all the way up to
the multiplex parking lot. ‘Rush’
belongs to neither of these categories. It does not need to. It is one of those
genre busting films which blows you out of the theatre with its scale and
sweep. It’s reminiscent of Chariots of
Fire in that it depicts the intense rivalry between two athletes which
consumes themRon Howard,. But that was about running, which is arguably the purest of
athletic pursuits with its numerous references to myths and legends. This
however is F1 racing, the debauched adolescent of the sporting world with its hedonistic
and reckless ways. It bewitches you in the way delinquent kids with bikes and
leather jackets always get their girls: with a promise of danger and death
staring in the face.
The opening scene from
that fateful day at Nurburgring sets the tone of the intense rivalry which runs
as the central theme. Moving the clock several years back to the past, it
chronicles the different paths to racing glory that James Hunt, the flamboyant
British driver with dashing good looks and cavalier ways and Nicky Lauda, the
obsessive and neurotic Austrian, whose methodical and dispassionate approach to
motorsports made him a polar opposite of Hunt, took; the latter’s somewhat
comical looks and abrasive personality not the least of the differences with
Hunt’s charisma and spontaneity. Lauda’s
approach to racing was perhaps ahead of its times; in an era (and maybe even
now) when racing was synonymous with machismo and the tantalizing prospect of
‘cheating death ‘, as Hunt once describes, Lauda was into it by his own
admission and I quote, ‘God gave me an okay
mind, but an ass which can feel everything in the car’.
This clash of personalities defines the tone and the differences are brought
out poignantly in scene after scene. My favorite is the one where Lauda and his
girl (Alexandra Maria Lara) hitch hike a ride from a couple of besotted Lauda
fans when their ride breaks down. The two having met only hours before at a
party, the lady is incredulous when the fans wax eloquent about his heroics on
the racetrack, with Lauda himself pottering along behind the steering wheel
during the scene. The ruthless exposition of Lauda’s racing philosophy that
follows and how he succumbs to the lady’s taunts to abandon his reserve will
surely go down in folklore as one of the more memorable sports movie scenes.
Ron Howard takes the first
half to masterfully flesh out the characters. The rivalry is allowed to build
up as you almost rejoice and despair along with the characters. Chris
Hemsworth, who essays James Hunt, lets us peek into the inner turmoil of a man
liable to be easily dismissed as a dilettante. His ritual of retching his
stomach out before every race and his fortitude in bouncing back from personal
setbacks, including winning newshounds over with his disarming one-liners when
quizzed over his failed marriage, underlines this performance. When you
consider that Hunt’s character is overshadowed by Lauda’s for the latter’s
sheer grit and raw emotions, Hemsworth manages to hold his own as a playboy
racer who found it in himself to turn in one intense season. Hell, he even
sounds philosophical as he paints the irony of zipping around in a ‘bomb on
wheels’ chasing juvenile glory in a playful yet seductive scene with his
eventually estranged wife played by Olivia Wilde.
Gears are shifted in the
post intermission with the chilling race on that fateful day in Nurburgring
gluing you to your seats. The cinematography is explosive as the mean machines
trace the contours of the legendary track which has extracted its pound of
flesh over the years. The visual of the spider crawling down a beam on the
foreground while the racetrack’s lethal reputation is narrated – as a metaphor
for its grim harvest - is another
personal favorite of mine. The final race of that year – the Japanese Grand
Prix with Mount Fuji as the stunning backdrop - provides the final unraveling
of the characters personalities. No prim endings here ala Days of Thunder with the hero burning rubber into the sunset with
lady love riding shotgun, only a brutal expose of a sport where percentages are
played not to triumph, but just to stay in one piece.
If you are a petrolhead, watching it once will not satiate your thirst for octane, if you are not, the
disarming honesty of the two rivals will still make you fall in love with their
pursuits for glory. The roar of the V12 engines were still ringing in my head
even hours after I had left the theatre; you feel sorry for the other releases,
who can stand up to a 450 horsepower beast screaming down the tarmac scattering
dust and blades of grass in its wake?! Even then, this is less about the
machines and more about the human endeavor to pursue glory. The exchange
between Hunt and Lauda in the closing scenes sums up the conflict between the
head and the heart in sports; what is often seen as heroism in the arena may
just be foolhardiness. Can athletes regard their craft dispassionately and
could winning just be a function of playing the percentages? Are the Hunts of
the world modern day gladiators or was Lauda the forebearer of the modern day
pro athlete, who is in it only because he can’t be better at anything else?
Rush is a movie which
inspires faith in the magnificence of sports and yet questions the legend of
the Achillean athlete who is eventually shown up to have feet of clay. What is
evident is its ability to spur mortals to superhuman heights; that’s why the
Sennas of the world live on in our hearts.
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