Spirit of the Marathon

As a filmmaker and marathon runner I could see it being difficult to achieve what the filmmakers have done with Spirit of the Marathon. To mix some marathon history into the the stories of several amateur and professional runners might be tough. But they did it wonderfully. I particularly liked what was said by Dick Beardsley and Frank Shorter, two famous runners w/some very inspiring words.

I think it was Shorter, who has a great line that kicks off the title sequence at the start of the documentary. Awesome! If you're looking for a "how do I train for a marathon" documentary this is not it! Do your own research, it's out there! Appreciate this film for what it is, a documentary about real people and some very interesting marathoning history.

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.

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.

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.

For some odd reason it was decided to show this movie throughout the country only once on January 24th at 7:30pm. Because of this every theater in Chicago was sold out of tickets weeks before the event. I wound up driving to the suburbs to see it. Fortunately for those that missed it they will have an encore presentation on February 21st.

If you are a runner or have set a goal to one day run a marathon you will love this movie without a doubt. If you also happen to live in Chicago you will love it even more. Oddly enough this movie is released in 2008 but follow people preparing for the 2005 marathon.

The strength of this film was that they not only followed the elite runners they followed people from all speeds. One of the people they followed was Deena Kastor, the current US women's record holder for the marathon (and I believe 5K, 8K, 15K, and the half last I heard), one of the best American hopefuls for the Olympics this year. They also followed runners that were attempting to qualify for Boston as well as a few first timers and over 5 hour runners. The only other documentary about marathons I've seen was the Nova version which followed all first timers so it was nice seeing a broader range of views and struggles.

I have only ran one marathon so far and after that I became more intent on improving my time than ever before with Chicago being my next one. With an attitude like that it was inevitable I was going to like this film but Jon Dunham did a fantastic job piecing together some very unique footage that helps you appreciate the scale of such an event even more.

It gets my heart pumping just thinking about the next marathon.