LONDON — Sebastian Coe — that’s Seb to his pals, Lord Coe to you — had this to say about the architect of Friday night’s opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics:
“I can’t imagine what it is like being in Danny Boyle’s head for even half an hour.”
Well, the world got a full three hours’ worth Friday, and a little more, when the Academy Award-winning director of Slumdog Millionaire shone his offbeat, occasionally whimsical light on the touchstones of Britain’s cultural heritage, from Shakespeare to J.K. Rowling, the Beatles to Arctic Monkeys, sheep to socialized medical care, the Industrial Revolution to the World Wide Web.
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Performers dressed in the suits worn by The Beatles on the cover of their album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' during the Opening Ceremony.
And Coe, the legendary middle distance runner, now chairman of the Games organizing committee, was right: Boyle’s £27-million extravaganza, entitled Isles of Wonder, was a trip.
It was a trip that took the world to Buckingham Palace, where Boyle had filmed a short piece in which Queen Elizabeth — the real one, with her Corgis — actually agreed to act in a spoof with Daniel Craig, in his James Bond tux, as they headed off to a helicopter preparing to skydive into the Olympic Stadium.
She didn’t, really, and neither did 007. But Her Majesty was there, in person, with IOC chief Jacques Rogge, to open the Games.
Boyle’s trip took a crowd that had been charmed with scenes of Middle Ages pastoral beauty and blasted with the noise and pollution of the Industrial Revolution and transported through the nurses of the National Health Service into sick kids’ hospitals — and directly from there into Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean.
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Rowan Atkinson in his role as Mr Bean
Bean stole the show, of course. Starting with his one-note part in the playing of the theme from Chariots of Fire, morphing into a daydream about running with Eric Liddell on the beaches of St. Andrews — he won the race in his dream by veering off to take a London cab — the malleable face of this comedic genius opened a chapter on British pop culture that played out to a soundtrack of some of the greatest rock ’n’ roll music ever recorded.
“We have been pretty good in the music we produce. For such a small country, the amount of popular music we produce has been spectacular, really,” Boyle said, in an afternoon news conference, and the middle segment of the evening, with all that wondrous music, showed he was telling no lies.
The preamble began with four cotton-candy-like, helium-filled clouds hovering 50 feet above ground, the sound of twittering birds through the speakers — and a stadium floor turned into an expanse of farmland around a thatched-roof cottage onto which maidens and farmers (and a border collie) had herded a couple of dozen sheep, a draft horse hitched to a hay wain, cows, goats, an assortment of ducks and geese and chickens, played soccer, cricket, badminton (badly) and danced around maypoles (the maidens, not the animals).
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Artists arrive on a horse and carriage during the Opening Ceremony.
When the hour rolled round, Tour de France-winning cyclist Bradley Wiggins rang the largest harmonically-tuned bell in the world, actor Kenneth Branagh read a passage from Shakespeare’s The Tempest — “Be not afeard: the Isle is full of noises” — and the green and pleasant land began to transform itself into the darker, louder, scene of the Industrial Revolution, smokestacks rising where the fields had been.
Yes, Vancouver, they all deployed.
Though the skies looked ominous, the weather service actually had it right: no rain fell once the show began.
The athletes’ parade, as always, seemed almost lost in the theatrics, though it too had its fireworks moments — the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt, bearing Jamaica’s flag, Maria Sharapova for Russia, L.A. Lakers’ Pau Gasol for Spain, tennis star Novak Djokovic for Serbia.
Biggest upset of the night: the Germans paraded in wearing pink and blue.
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Germany's flagbearer Natascha Keller leads her delegation.
Triathlete Simon Whitfield led Canada’s large, red-jacket-clad contingent into the stadium at about 10:35 p.m. London time, but the Canadians had a long wait until Britain brought the parade to a thunderous close 90 minutes later, the Union Jack carried by Scottish cycling hero Sir Chris Hoy, winner of three gold medals in Beijing, to a shower of confetti and an enormous ovation from a sellout crowd in the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium.
“In a sense, the Olympic Games are coming home tonight,” Rogge said, of the only city ever to host the Games three times, over a span of more than a century, in a country he called “the birthplace of modern sport.”
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Canada's Simon Whitfield carries the flag during the Opening Ceremony at the 2012 Summer Olympics Friday in London.
The identity of the lighter of the Olympic cauldron was a carefully kept secret that never got spilled, which, when you think of all the people involved in the production, including children, is pretty impressive. But as it turned out, the kids might not have recognized half the names.
Sir Steve Redgrave, the brilliant English rower, carried the flame into the stadium, but once in, he became one of seven British Olympic heroes — with Lynn Davies, Duncan Goodhew, Kelly Holmes, Mary Peters, Shirley Robertson and Daley Thompson — to hand off torches to seven young athletes, who together lit the strands of copper petals that rose to become the giant cauldron.
No mention of Roger Bannister, the man who broke the four-minute mile in Vancouver in 1954, who had been a co-favourite with Redgrave to light the big flame.
Was the lighting-by-committee as inspiring as the archer who lit the cauldron by launching his flaming arrow into it in Barcelona? As shattering as Muhammad Ali’s shaky ascent in Atlanta? Perhaps not.
Ali was here Friday night, one of the ceremonial bearers of the Olympic flag, but sadly, he did not understand when his wife repeatedly asked him to wave to the cheering crowd.
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Queen Elizabeth II speaks during the Opening Ceremony.
And in the end, there was Paul McCartney singing The End — “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make” — the last track on the Beatles’ final studio album, Abbey Road, except for a brief addendum that goes: “Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl but she doesn’t have a lot to say …”
With the Queen in the house, that might not have gone over well, so the 70-year-old McCartney’s seque was to the iconic Hey Jude, and if the timbre wasn’t the same in the voice, the song remained the same.
For London at the start of its third great Olympic adventure, the songs carried the night.
Postmedia Olympic Team
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Jamaica's flagbearer Usain Bolt leads his delegation.
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Rings representing both the Olympics and the Industrial Revolution are lit.
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Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry during the Opening Ceremony.
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Artists perform during the Opening Ceremony.
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Fireworks over the Olympic Stadium and the Aquatics Arena during the Opening Ceremony.
