The Everlasting Flame: Beijing 2008

The Everlasting Flame is the official documentary of the 2008 Summer Olympics, which were held in Beijing. The movie takes two approaches towards documenting the games. The first is to highlight a handful of athletes: Thomasz Wylenzek (Germany, canoeing), Kyle Bennett (USA, BMX racing), Haile Gebreselassie (Ethiopia, 10K race), Usain Bolt & Asafa Powell (Jamaica, track) and Hadi Saei & Sara Khosjamal Fekri (Iran, Taekwondo). These athletes are shown training at home and special attention is paid to their events. The women's gymnastics events are also given detailed treatment. All of the rest of the events are covered in snippets and montages, which is a shame, but given the number of events, understandable. The opening ceremonies, directed by Zhang Jimou, are also given an in depth look, although they were so beautiful, I could have watched a whole movie about them.

Going a different direction of Olympic documentaries, rather than showing many events and highlights of the 16 days of glory, this one went with a few individual cases before the tournament and how they prepare, not very new and unique but okay, and then moving on to their performances. Overall very, very boring to watch.

Worst part of the entire thing is this US vs China girls Olympics gymnastics. Already very controversial with their obviously faked birth certificates they would never include this in the documentary if the Chinese side hadn't won the team competition.