If there’s been a single moment representing the definitive emergence of the world from the Covid-19 pandemic, it was the Olympics Opening Ceremony in Paris. The Olympics needed this after the necessary, but emotionally stifling, lockdowns of the Tokyo and Beijing Games. The world needed this.
A coming-out party for the ages — and easily the best Opening Ceremony for a Summer or Winter Games since Rio’s in 2016, if not earlier — the July 26 ceremony featured several moments of transcendent emergence that will stick with viewers for a long time: There was the first ringing of the bells of Notre Dame since fire almost destroyed the 900-year-old cathedral in April 2019; Rafa Nadal, after all his injuries and still walking with slight hesitation, taking the Olympic torch to a waiting boat on the Seine, where Serena Williams was waiting (along with Carl Lewis and Nadia Comaneci) in what was kind of a whole end-of-that-era moment for tennis; and of course the extraordinary closing performance of Celine Dion, whose voice rang out from the second level of the Eiffel Tower in a triumphant rendition of Edith Piaf’s “L’hymne à l’amour.” Somehow, after everything she’s been through, Celine sounded better than ever —this was a performance on par with Whitney Houston singing “The National Anthem” at the Super Bowl or Aretha Franklin stepping in for Luciano Pavarotti and belting “Nessum Dorma.” Unforgettable in its titanic power and artistic command.
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On NBC’s broadcast of the Opening Ceremony, Kelly Clarkson was reduced to tears by Dion’s performance. “I actually can’t talk,” the co-host, alongside Mike Tirico and Peyton Manning, said of the moment, audibly suppressing sobs, before mentioning what a triumph it was for Dion, who hasn’t performed publicly in years following her diagnosis of the rare neurological condition known as stiff-person syndrome. It was a reaction of pure emotion this Opening Ceremony had a unique power to elicit, the way that only a spectacle that’s slightly goofy, a little galaxy-brained, but thunderously bedazzling ever could.
Every two years, the eyes of the world turn to these Olympic Opening and Closing ceremonies for spectacles of national feeling and global togetherness played out across stadium-sized pageantry. The result is always something that you’ll never see in any other context. An interpretive dance representing the evils of the world was one such moment staged in Paris for the event, performers spasmodically moving their bodies in an attempt to represent war, famine, and other horrors, before collapsing to the ground in stillness. That’s what true Olympic fans love about these ceremonies: That ineffable combination of theater-camp pretension and blockbuster production values.
A mechanical horse appeared to gallop on water, recalling an image of a robot horse from “The Animatrix.” It bore a masked torchbearer, who was the main character of the Opening Ceremony, tying all the disparate elements of the pageant together as he or she brought the Olympic Flame with them: They had toured the Louvre, where figures from famed works of art appeared to leave their paintings — Jacques Louis-David’s “The Death of Marat” suddenly featured a void where the French Revolutionary leader should have been sprawled dead in his bathtub, and “The Raft of the Medusa” lost all of its refugees — as well as the Notre Dame construction site, and Louis Vuitton’s workshop. They did parkour on the rooftops of the city and appeared at a fashion show that took place on a bridge spanning the Seine. All of these elements felt remarkably well synthesized, without the handwringing anxiety that plagued Danny Boyle’s incoherent Opening and Closing ceremonies for the 2012 Games in London (“We’re not colonialists anymore, we’re truly welcoming and inclusive —here’s the Spice Girls! And One Direction! And Kenneth Branagh as Charles Dickens”). Here, the chorus of the Republican Guard, formed in 1848, flowed effortlessly into a performance by French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura. In Paris, this wasn’t a ceremony that had to force inclusivity: It just was inclusive.
It flowed so well, with such truly cinematic fluidity, because its organizers —led by artistic director Thomas Jolly — actually embraced the lessons of the Covid era, even as they celebrated our emergence from it. Jolly and his team understood that a mix of in-person and virtual elements can result in a more impactful experience for television. The parade of nations, taking place this time on the Seine with each delegation on a boat, felt distanced just enough in case there had been a major Covid outbreak again. And Jolly broke up the parade with judiciously timed performances, such as Lady Gaga’s cabaret-style “Mon Truc en Plumes,” which was in fact taped earlier but edited in an organic way that made it feel live. Just filming performances on a stage or in a stadium can have the feeling of filmed theater — not something that’s as impactful as being there in-person or as kinetically engaging as an actual movie or video — so weaving in pre-taped elements that could be filmed in a more cinematic way made the entire thing more engaging.
It felt like an Olympic movie, one where the edit was assembled in your mind and the entire city of Paris was itself the stadium. Instead of musicians performing in an arena, Jolly gave us a close-up of an animatronic Marie Antoinette holding her head while ensconced in an alcove of the castle-like building known as the Conciergerie alongside the Seine, following a pre-taped segment from the musical “Les Miserables.” It then immediately cut to French metal band Gojira performing from balconies on that same building —and then opera singer Marina Viotti interpreting a bit of “Carmen.” The entire thing suggested that we’re out of the Covid era, but we’re not back to the way the world was before it. And that’s okay. We don’t need to be. And perhaps we shouldn’t be. “Hybrid” is the operating word of the post-Covid world and one to be embraced. At the Opening Ceremony of the Summer Games in Paris, “hybrid” was the triumph of the new.
