Spirit of the Marathon

As a serious marathoner, I was seriously disappointed in this film. Its target audience is clearly those who have never run a marathon, or novice marathoners. Following the stories of 2 first-time marathoners, one senior, one injured runner, and two elites as they prepare for the Chicago marathon, the film dedicates the majority of its attention to one female beginner whose story is, for lack of a better word, boring. While I did enjoy the brief glimpses into the training sessions of Deena Kastor, the brief history of the Boston marathon and marathoning in general, let me emphasize: These were brief!! Watching some Joe Runners prepare for a Saturday run with their water bottles and talking about how they view the marathon is not inspiring, and the nonstop clichés about achievement and feel-good grinning runners will make you wish the film were about an hour shorter. If you are a first-time marathoner, this film may give you a feeling of "I can do it." For anyone else, run away.

What an inspiring film. I just love it. The film was beautifully shot, the pace of the film moved quickly, and the cast was great!

The film follows a 70 year old runner, Jerry, who is hysterical. And what an intense finish for both Daniel and Deena, I don't think I breathed during the last mile of their race. I love that the film showed the wide spectrum of runners from the young to the old, the injured to the elites, it was a well balanced film.

The history on the sport was fascinating. I liked the section on the Boston Marathon and Katherine Switzers story is very inspiring for woman today.

This has been one of the better films I have seen this year!

This is a beautifully filmed, heartfelt look at the sport of running 26.2 miles. We follow six runners who cover the whole range, from beginners to world-class, through training and the race itself, the Chicago Marathon. Vintage film and comments by the experts - historians, champion runners - fill out the perspective.

I myself have done 22 marathons, but not Chicago. That said, I believe the film succeeded in putting the viewer IN the race, with some sense of pounding away mile after mile, in a beautiful urban setting. The audience I was with tonight (Regal Cinemas, Abingdon, MD)included many veteran runners, who often shared a laugh with different people in the film. I thought it a measure of the film's success that this veteran crowd cheered as one of the runners (you'll know who)crossed the finish line when he/she did.

A caveat about waiting for this to come to DVD: the aerial camera-work on the race itself is stunning! It will loose power on the small screen. Consider an overhead shot that starts as the first runners cross the start line, then slowly pans over all the starters-in-waiting, a veritable 'ocean of humanity', a shot that continued far longer than I expected. Then there are the high overhead shots during the race, showing the gorgeous but far-flung urban landscape, with tiny dots - each a runner - moving along the streets below. Such shots capture the scale of the event, the vast distance the runners are up against. I suspect that at home, one will need the zoom option on the DVD player to see the runners.

Beyond this, I hope someday there will be a documentary from primarily within the race (personal cams - shades of CLOVERFIELD or BLAIR WITCH PROJECT!), to give the non-runner the closest feel that cinema allows for moving step by step 26 miles 385 yds. Until then, SPIRIT OF THE MARATHON will do wonderfully.

The movie focused on several people from all walks of life (professional, younger, older, etc.) who have decided to take on the challenge of the marathon. It presents all of their compelling stories and gives us insight into the training (both mental and physical) that goes into preparing for such an arduous run.

Additionally, the movie provides a good amount of detail about the history of the sport, with commentary from writers, historians, athletes, etc., who all think of this as the ultimate human competition.

The movie is well-written, well-scored, and has very, very genuine people who I could relate to. It does a great job in helping the audience live the marathon race through these characters, feeling elated at their successes, diminished when they fail, and anxious when they see the finish line in the distance.

Big thumbs up!

I saw this movie with a friend who ran a marathon with me, and we both had the same feeling about it: it wasn't terribly motivating, and didn't even broach the idea of what a training schedule would look like, so that non-marathoners could have an idea of what it would take for them to train and run one. In fact there was almost zero technical information at all. I didn't expect this to be a tech-heavy instructional video, but when that info was near zero then the film just wasn't balanced, and wasn't particularly useful to non-marathoners contemplating their first run.

There were other problems. Some of the very first images were people collapsing near death while trying to run a race. Yeah, real inspiring. The timing was also hard to follow, because it was semi chronological, but the filmmakers rarely gave you any good clues as to what point in time you were looking at. And they withheld information. You see that Kantor has an injury, and you just assume it's from all her training, but then several scenes later they finally clue you in that it's because she tripped over a pine cone in her yard.

Some parts were very good, though, like the bit about a woman defying race officials who wanted the run to be men-only, and the coverage of a Chicago race where two of the runners portrayed earlier were vying for first place.

Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of other chronological documentaries, like Supersize Me, and Grass, where you always know where you are, and you feel like they told you everything you wanted to know.

In short, it wouldn't have been hard to make a better marathon film, and as it stands I can't recommend this to non-marathoners to educate and motivate them to try one, because I don't think it will have that effect.