The immaculate execution of Tokyo’s Olympic opening ceremony was at all times going to be a tricky act to comply with. Paris made the canny resolution to not attempt to emulate its stadium spectacle and hi-tech bling. (Keep in mind that formidable association of 1,800 drones?)
This ceremony’s inventive director, Thomas Jolly, had the impressed thought to lean into Paris’s famed romance through the use of the town itself as a stage. So a country-by-country flotilla of athletes sailed down the Seine whereas a 6km (3.7 mile) parade snaked throughout its bridges, roads and rooftops. However what seems like a very unique thought on paper doesn’t at all times dwell as much as its enactment on a rain-sodden evening in central Paris.
There have been some highlights: French Algerian footballing legend, Zinedine Zidane, handing the Olympic torch to a gaggle of youngsters to kick issues off; a gorgeously choreographed dance displaying the reconstruction of Notre Dame and a gold carpet unfurled for fabulous French-Malian singer-songwriter, Aya Nakamura at Pont des Arts, with dancers shimmering alongside her (the hearsay that she was to carry out at this ceremony had led to racist outrage from far-right politicians so her presence on the ceremony felt like a triumph given Marine Le Pen’s latest defeat).
However there have been some totally bizarre curatorial choices too. Why, for instance, was Woman Gaga the primary act? Surrounded by pink ostrich feathers and carrying a fascinator that seemed like a feather quill atop her head, she placed on her greatest French accent to sing Mon truc en plumes (initially by Zizi Jeanmaire) nevertheless it nonetheless seemed like a scrappy, cheesy, riverbank cabaret by an American pop star. Billboards with a pink wash (a visible pun on La Vie en Rose?) featured phrases like “stylish!” and seemed low lease too. French heavy steel band Gojira performed one minute, an opera singer sang Bizet’s Carmen the subsequent. And the torchbearer was faceless and hooded, like a maniacal creation from the Halloween movie franchise, sprinting throughout roofs and zip-lining throughout buildings like he may be chasing a screaming sufferer.
As inventive because it might need been, it appeared disjointed, with the sense of many issues taking place concurrently, and the promenading performances leaping from one thought to the subsequent – from a cancan to a gothic tableau that includes mock-beheaded ladies on the home windows of the Conciergerie with pink streamers that seemed like macabre spurting blood.
The French Revolution’s guiding rules of liberty, equality and fraternity (with sorority thrown in) ostensibly gave the present its construction however in impact it appeared to have heaps of Amelie-style whimsy however no deeper unity or coherence. And whereas there was a democracy in staging it throughout the streets, quite just like the Tour de France, it felt like a piecemeal spectacle, little question fleeting for these watching it in Paris.
Paris is thought for its style however this seemed like a motley outfit thrown collectively. Water cannons, road dancers in Louis XIV outfits, and ultra-camp vogue exhibits which appeared like against the law in opposition to high fashion: it will not have seemed misplaced at Cannes’ gaudy la Croisette.
At the very least it calmed down right into a dignified procession by the point it reached the Trocadero, with a silver-clad determine arriving on horseback, though a frenzy of blue lasers beaming throughout the Eiffel Tower introduced one other off-note. Probably the most hanging second of the evening got here at its finish, because the Olympic cauldron was lit inside a scorching air balloon. It launched into the evening sky like a floating, orange-red orb. A powerful spectacle, lastly, set once more Celine Dion’s evocative rendition of Edith Piaf’s L’Hymne à l’amour. The ceremony may have finished with a lot extra of this class.
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