I remember the interschool waterpolo final in my first form. We lost the final by one goal against a team that had no problem dunking us, pulling our hair and kicking us in the balls. Man those girls were brutal. Having grown up obsessed with the Olympics, for a moment I felt like the Hungarian waterpolo team after that bitter loss. I had been especially fascinated by that game that the historians always seemed to talk about, the so-called bloodiest game in Olympic history, the one with the iconic picture of the Hungarian player (Ervin Zádor) with blood streaming from his eye. I felt like I’d taken part in a game like that in the final I played, though in later years, I realised the full extent of the tensions of that fateful game in 1956. And of course, my own team’s vengeful vows and bitter memories were utterly trivial in hindsight.

Freedom’s Fury looks into this game, a mere sporting encounter at what was the “Friendly Games” in Melbourne. The Olympic Games are meant to celebrate peace and friendship, yet even these so-called Friendly Games took place in the middle of global conflict – the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution. It was the latter that’s the focus of the documentary, the brutal Soviet invasion of Hungary, as Hungary’s democratic reforms threatened to undermine the Warsaw Pact and Soviet control of its satellite states. Leading up to the fateful events of October/November 1956, the Hungarian waterpolo team was the most successful team in the sport’s history. They led the sport with their innovations and superstars, and teams like the Soviet Union, were forced to use their political influence to train with the Hungarian team in order to improve. But as the Revolution took place, and high numbers of their countrymen were being killed by the Soviets, it meant the Olympics suddenly paled in significance to many in the team. However, when they did play in the Olympics, events conspired to force a highly dramatic semi-final encounter with the Soviets themselves.

This documentary will be of interest primarily to Olympic and Cold War history fans. It’s a rather straightforward documentary visually and narrative-wise (the game itself could have portrayed more dramatically), yet the talking head interviews are frequently fascinating and widely drawn. It gets hold of some interesting primary footage, however the film’s opening mentions that some footage has been recreated or altered, leading to question the need to have done so with such good original images. The film’s executive producers were surprisingly Lucy Liu and Quentin Tarantino, and the solid narration was voiced by Olympic legend Mark Spitz, who had a personal connection to the team (he was coached in real-life by Zádor) and the sport itself. An ultimately solid, if unspectacular film that reiterates no matter how much we try and pretend otherwise, sport and politics do indeed mix.—Brannavan Gnanalingam