"Race" plots its viewers in the middle of evil and implores us to find the moral discourse
This 2016 biopic about 1936 Olympic track star Jesse Owens is a tale of its time or is it? Themes of antisemitism and racism loom large in this film.
This weekend as I watched in horror the events unfold in Israel, and those that are ongoing as even more Hamas rockets fire on the country today and we hear about missing mothers, grandmothers and children, I’m reminded that the brand of evil and antisemitism that Germany and her allies in the 1930s and 40s perpetrated and which resulted in the deaths of over 6 million Jews is never far. Neither is rationalizing atrocities and dehumanizing entire populations of people for the sake of a narrative that allows people to sleep at night.
Watching the movie, Race this weekend, served as a warning of what happens when nations in the global community say or do very little to stand up against hatred, of any kind.
Race a biopic about 4-time Olympic Gold winning track and field champion Jesse Owens is streaming on Netflix.
Grade: Solid B (Acting is decent, Story is interesting, Jason Sudeikis plays yet another lovably flawed coach Ted Lasso, and Google doom scrolls ensue regarding Jesse Owens so curiosity is sufficiently piqued)
“The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.” - Jesse Owens
Jesse (J.C.) Owens was born in Alabama in 1913, the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of a slave. He moved up with his family to Cleveland, Ohio in his youth as part of The Great Migration (1910-1940), the one that saw “1.6 million African Americans leave the segregated and rural South for the urban and industrial North” to seek employment and economic stability.
Owens’ skill in running insanely fast earned him a scholarship to Ohio State where he was recruited by the famous track and field star and coach Larry Snyder, who later went on to become an Olympics track and field coach. In the film, Owens is played by Stephen James (Selma) and Snyder played by Ted Lasso star and SNL alum, Jason Sudeikis. The film’s emotional viability and believability is really incumbent upon the chemistry between these two actors and for the most part, it’s there.
We see glimpses here of the inspirational coach Sudeikis is going to become in years ahead when he transforms into Ted Lasso, but not quite as smooth and well scripted. He’s still earning his chops. Stephen James plays Owens with the right level of impetuous college student who is balancing care and responsibilities for his family, girlfriend and mother to his child, and the gravitas required in having to exist as a black person in the 1920s and 30s in the U.S. Eventually he is called upon to represent his nation and his race, in the Berlin Olympics in which the Nazi-run campaign “played nice” by allowing for Blacks and Jews to compete but then denied the two Jewish athletes their earned qualification to compete in the 400 meter relay race.
Per Glickman, one of the two Jewish athletes who was banned from competing in Berlin, of his experience at the games:
In the entire history of the modern Olympic Games, now going into its 100th year, no fit American track and field performer has ever not competed in the Olympic Games except for Sam Stoller and me — the only 2 Jews on the 1936 team.
I was always aware of the fact that I am a Jew, never unaware of it, under virtually all circumstances. Even in the high school competitions, and certainly at college and for the Olympic team, I wanted to show that a Jew could do just as well as any other individual no matter what his race, creed, or color, and perhaps even better.
The Olympic stadium itself is a very impressive place. It was particularly impressive then, filled with 120,000 people. When Hitler walked into the Stadium, stands would rise, and you'd hear it in unison, "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," all together, this huge sound reverberating through the stadium.
Everyone seemed to be in uniform. As for banners and flags, they were all over the place, dominated by the swastika. The swastika was all over. On virtually every other banner we saw, there was a swastika. But this was 1936, this was before we really got to know what the swastika truly meant.
There was antisemitism in Germany. I knew that. And there was antisemitism in America. In New York City, I was also aware of the fact that there were certain places I was not welcome. You went into a hotel, for example, and you'd see a small sign where you registered which read "Restricted clientele," which meant, in effect, no Jews or Blacks allowed.
The event I was supposed to run, the 400-meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400-meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe.
We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18-year-old kid and I said "Coach, you can't hide world-class sprinters." At which point, Jesse spoke up and said "Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it," said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said "You'll do as you're told." And in those days, Black athletes did as they were told, and Jesse was quiet after that.
Watching the final the following day, I see Metcalfe passing runners down the back stretch, he ran the second leg, and [I thought] "that should be me out there. That should be me. That's me out there." I as an 18-year-old, just out of my freshman year, I vowed that come 1940 I'd win it all. I'd win the 100, the 200, I'd run on the relay. I was going to be 22 in 1940. I was a good athlete, I knew that, and 4 years hence I was going to be out there again. Of course, 1940 never came. There was a war on. 1944 never came.
The Banality of Evil
Beyond the athlete facing adversity story, the other prevailing storyline here is the U.S. Olympics committee and their complicity, specifically Avery Brundage (played by Jeremy Irons) who would go on to serve as president of the International Olympics Committee (1955-1972) and who took bribes from the Nazis per this film’s version of events. It’s no coincidence that Brundage’s Olympics reign ended in the Munich Olympics in 72 when Black Sunday, a Palestinian terrorist group infiltrated the Olympic village where there was very little security to take the entire Israeli Olympic team hostage and then kill them.
Back in 1936 however…The memo being that Brundage saw what was going on with the Nazis and decided to kindly look the other way in favor of economic prosperity and his own bigotry. William Hurt playing Jeremiah Mahoney, by the film’s depiction is the only one to stand up to Brundage and carry a coalition in favor of having the U.S. drop out of the Berlin games as a show of support against the Nazis. As the story goes and history relays, the vote in favor of having the U.S. participate in 1936 won out.
There are certain scenes in this film which are memorable and one in particular at the end of the film, in which Owens, who faced criticism for competing in Berlin games from the NAACP, which encouraged black athletes to not participate, comes back to NYC to receive some sort of dinner in his honor and he’s not allowed through the front door of the hotel. Instead, he is told to use the service entrance. It’s a not so subtle reminder that no matter what was achieved or personified on that field through Owens’ humanity, it always comes down to things as surface as skin color or ethnic group. Notably, Owens was never congratulated for his achievements by the President. He felt the sting and is quoted as saying, ““Hitler didn't snub me—it was [Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram.”
A Tree Grows in Berlin
Another theme in the film points to the bond between athletes and seeking out humanity (the opposite of dehumanization) as the antidote to hatred. When Jesse goes on to compete in the long jump event at the Berlin Olympics against the German athlete and record holder in long jump at the time, Luz Long, Long gives Jesse a pointer so he doesn’t keep fouling. His assertion being that he wanted a true competition but he could have just as easily let Owens continue to foul and take the win over him.
When Luz eventually loses, he goes on to celebrate Jesse’s win and takes a triumphant run alongside Jesse. Long would later be penalized for his actions here in solidarity with a black person when he was sent to die in Italy by Rudolf Hess, one of Hitler’s leading SS officers, who told him to never embrace a black man again. The friendship however between Owens and Long endured, with Long writing Owens in his final letter to find his son Karl and tell him, “what times were like when we not separated by war. I am saying—tell him how things can be between men on this earth.”
Racism is never far from Owens’ experience in this film. It’s overt and found in locker rooms, schools, clubs and in best-in-class competitions where ideally only athletic skill should be the qualifying factor. Owens’ life after the Olympics was one which found him the subject of scrutiny, bankruptcy and trying to find steady employment. It’s definitely not the stuff of which Olympic dreams are made of.
One of his notable post-athletic creative achievements IMO is his revisiting of the 1936 Berlin Olympics event, in 1966, in which Owens goes back to the stadium, still completely intact, despite WW2. The documenraty called “Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin” is available on Vimeo, produced by Bud Greenspan. In fact, if you don’t have a ton of time but are mostly interested in learning about the 1936 Olympics, I’d recommend skipping the dramatized version of events in Race and go directly to this.
The Bizarre Triumph of the Misunderstood Riefenstahl in this Film
My one major criticism of the film Race is the screen time it gives to Leni Riefenstahl (here played by Dutch actress Carice van Houten), a filmmaker who was hired by the Nazis to produce propaganda films, like Triumph of the Will and eventually Olympia her film about the 1936 Olympics. With so few women of any agency portrayed in the film, it’s possible that van Houten’s presence and her forced storyline were deliberate to show a counterbalance. Here she’s a misunderstood artiste among brutes but playing the game so she can survive when in reality this was likely not the case. Then again, it’s a drama and there’s license taken here in all aspects.
I spent time in Israel over the Spring and Summer this past year, visiting family. This post on WW2 and Varian Fry (prompted by the Netflix series Transatlantic) was a reflection of this series and those times.
How much did you know about Jesse Owens prior to this post? I heard about him in my youth I definitely forgot about him. He held onto his world record for a number of years. He died of lung cancer (smoked a pack a day) in 1980.
Per Wikipedia: “A few months before his death, Owens had unsuccessfully tried to convince President Jimmy Carter to withdraw his demand that the United States boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He argued that the Olympic ideal was supposed to be observed as a time-out from war and that it was above politics.” - What do you think of this? Is there place in sports to protest at a global level the political acts of a country? Or as Owens contends and Long alludes to, there is honor in persisting via athletic feats as a connection across cultures.
I watched this film with my son. It’s one of my favorite activities - watching films with my kids - in part because it allows for deeper exploration on subjects that are difficult to process and comprehend. Films are like bridges (or passes) paved with Candyland gumdrops.
Thanks Beth for your nuanced writing on films. So much better and more in depth than many “published” reviewers! Especially loved your take on Race. Thank you.
Been thinking about you this week. Holding space for you. Thank you for this essay - will definitely check this out!