[The noisy,
busy, witty, dizzying production somehow managed to feature a flock of sheep
(plus a busy sheepdog), the Sex Pistols, Lord Voldemort, the engineer Isambard
Kingdom Brunel, a suggestion that the Olympic rings were forged by British
foundries during the Industrial Revolution, the seminal Partridge Family
reference from “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” a group of people dressed like so
many members of Sgt. Pepper’s band, some rustic hovels tended by rustic
peasants, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and, in a paean to the National
Health Service, a zany bunch of dancing nurses and bouncing sick children on
huge hospital beds.]
By Sarah Lyall
The noisy, busy, witty, dizzying production somehow managed
to feature a flock of sheep (plus a busy sheepdog), the Sex Pistols, Lord
Voldemort, the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a suggestion that the Olympic
rings were forged by British foundries during the Industrial Revolution, the
seminal Partridge Family reference from “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” a group
of people dressed like so many members of Sgt. Pepper’s band, some rustic
hovels tended by rustic peasants, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and, in a
paean to the National Health Service, a zany bunch of dancing nurses and
bouncing sick children on huge hospital beds.
It was neither a nostalgic sweep through the past nor a
bold vision of a brave new future. Rather, it was a sometimes slightly insane
portrait of a country that has changed almost beyond measure since the last
time it hosted the Games, in the grim postwar summer of 1948.
There was that same sense of relief intermingled with self-satisfaction
this time. But such was the grandeur of 2012, even in these tough economic
times, that 80,000 people sat comfortably in a new Olympic Stadium, having
traveled by sleek new bullet trains and special V.I.P. road lanes to a new park
that has completely transformed once-derelict east London .
A little rain fell, but it hardly mattered. Queen Elizabeth
II was there, after co-starring with a tuxedoed Daniel Craig, also known as
James Bond, in a witty video in which she appears to parachute from a helicopter
(in fact, she entered the park the usual way). Looking mystified at times — the
ceremony was pitched to a generation different from hers — she presided over a
bevy of lesser royals and Prime Minister David Cameron.
The first lady, Michelle Obama, was in the audience to
cheer on the United
States
athletes, who, it must be said, did a lot of cheering for themselves anyway
during the athletes’ procession. And Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican
presidential nominee, was there, too, although he was practically Public Enemy
No. 1 around here after he appeared to question the British capacity for
enthusiasm, something only Britons are allowed to do.
One of the biggest secrets of the night — who would light
the Olympic caldron — was revealed at the end of the 3-hour-45-minute show,
when seven teenage athletes took over from the British rower Steve Redgrave,
who carried the torch into the stadium. The ceremony, conceived and
directed by the filmmaker Danny Boyle, was two years in the making. As is the
case almost every Olympics, much of the speculation around it centered on how Britain could possibly surpass the previous summer host, China . In 2008, Beijing used its awe-inspiring opening extravaganza to proclaim in
no uncertain terms that it was here, it was rich, and the world better get used
to it.
But outdoing anyone else, particularly the new superpower China , was not the point for a country that can never hope to
re-create the glory days of its empire. Mr. Cameron, the prime minister, said
this week that London ’s are “not a state-run Games — it is a people-run Games,”
and Boris Johnson, the London mayor, noted sharply that Britain was not planning to “spend our defense budget” on
“pyrotechnics” but would take pride in being “understated but confident.”
That the Olympics come at a time of deep economic malaise,
with Britain teetering on the edge of a double-dip recession, the government
cutting billions of dollars from public spending, and Europe lurching from
crisis to crisis, made the scene a bit surreal, even defiant in the face of so
much adversity.
The crowd in the stadium sat in a bubble of excitement. In
the wider park, volunteers have been behaving with an enthusiasm that seems
bewilderingly un-British. But out in the rest of the country, critics have been
questioning the expense, the ubiquitously heavy-handed security apparatus, and
the rampant commercialism of the Games.
In The Guardian, the columnist Marina Hyde said government
officials appeared to be rashly depending on the Olympics, which cost an
estimated £9.3 billion (or $14.6 billion), to save the country’s struggling
economy virtually single-handedly.
Referring to a British track-and-field star, Ms. Hyde
wrote that according to the government’s thinking, “Jessica Ennis winning gold
is no longer merely a sporting aspiration but something that would cause a
massive and immediate recalibration of the balance of payments.”
The final cost, or benefit, of the Games will never really
be known. But for now, the fact that things went smoothly on Friday was in
itself a minor cause for celebration.
Mr. Boyle said he did not want to seem extravagant,
particularly in a time of economic trouble, as he was given the daunting task
of trying to find a way for Britain to account for itself in this difficult moment in its long
history. The country has always eagerly celebrated its past: its military
victories, its kings and queens, its glorious cultural and intellectual
achievements. But it has a harder time celebrating its present.
A quixotic exercise in self-branding, during which
the then-Labour government thought to unite the country by coming up with what
it called a British “statement of values,” devolved into near-farce a few years
ago when the public greeted it with ridicule rather than enthusiasm. The Times
of London mischievously sponsored a motto-writing contest; the winner was “No
Motto Please, We’re British.”
The ceremony seemed to reflect that view, too, suggesting
that the thing that is most British about the British is their anarchic spirit
and their ability to laugh at themselves. It is hard to imagine, for instance,
the Chinese including, as the British did, a clip of the comic actor Rowan
Atkinson inserted into the opening scene from “Chariots of Fire,” shoving the
other runners out of the way (and ending with a rude noise paying tribute to
British lavatorial humor).
The ceremony, too, reflected the deeply left-leaning
sensibilities of Mr. Boyle. It pointedly included trade union members among a
parade of people celebrating political agitators from the past, a parade that
also included suffragists, Afro-Caribbean immigrants who fought for minority
rights, and the Jarrow hunger marchers, who protested against unemployment in
1936.
It would not be lost on Mr. Boyle that unions have suffered
in Britain in recent years, particularly at the hands of the
Conservative Party, led by Mr. Cameron. But he devised the ceremony, he said,
with no political interference.
That proved highly irritating to at least one politician,
Aiden Burley, a Conservative member of Parliament, who denounced on Twitter
what he referred to as the ceremony’s “leftie multicultural” content.
“The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen — more
than Beijing , the capital of a communist state!” he posted
grumpily.
Who knows how the country will feel when the Olympics are
over? But when the British athletes entered the stadium at the end of the
procession of countries, they did so to a recording of David Bowie, a
quintessential British oddity and supreme self-reinventor. “We can be heroes,”
the song goes, “just for one day.”
Campbell Robertson, Christopher Clarey,
Victor Mather, Andrew Das and Stephen Castle contributed reporting.
