The Spirit of the Marathon

Rating:

* * *

Verdict:

Evangelical, fitfully engaging look at the ultimate athletic event.

In a scene near the end of this documentary, competitors in the 2005 Chicago marathon pass a spectator holding a hand-scrawled sign that says "You're all crazy". The audience for the film will probably be made up mainly of people who regard running 42km as a very sane way to spend a day off.

There's a lot of spirit on show here and as a result the film has the cheerleading and evangelical feel of a motivational tool. Sample line: "People run the marathon to prove that there is still triumph and ... possibility in their lives."

But stirring pronouncements alone do not make a movie, and director Dunham (significantly, perhaps, a veteran of 24 marathons) has assembled his material in rather haphazard fashion. Scenes of huge historical moments, such as Abebe Bikila's barefoot gold-medal triumph in Rome, sit uneasily alongside the folksy stories of half a dozen competitors of various ability levels preparing for Chicago.

The marathon is a race shrouded in myths that the film, regrettably, only partly lays to rest: it retails in passing the decidedly suspect idea that Windsor Castle influenced that odd 26-mile-385-yard length (the true story is considerably more complicated than that) and includes less detail than it might have on the disputed story, which first emerged almost 600 years after the battle between the Athenians and the Persians, of Pheidippides' famous news-bearing run.

The competitors followed include the featherweight 2004 Olympic bronze medallist Deena Kastor and Tokyo-based Kenyan Daniel Njenga, as they prepare for the Chicago event, and documents the race itself with suitable drama and soaring strings. But the film itself doesn't achieve what many fine sporting films before it have done: to reach beyond its interest group to something transcendent.

Peter Calder

Director:

Jon Dunham

Running time:

102 mins

Rating:

G