NYAFF Report: Marathon Review

Out third man on the street in New York has checked in from the New York Asian Film Festival. Here's Josh Ralske with his thoughts on Marathon.

I’ve been covering the New York Asian Film Festival for several years now, but I only write capsule synopses and reviews for All Movie Guide, and I’ve never had the chance to write about the festival itself. So I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate Grady Hendrix and his cohorts at Subway Cinema for putting on one of the most consistently interesting and entertaining film festivals in the city. They’ve brought an amazing number of great films to New York. It’s always a highlight of my moviegoing year, and this edition is no exception. Even when they’ve shown films I don’t particularly like (as is unfortunately the case with Marathon), I’ve felt that it’s time well spent.

Marathon, the feature debut of writer-director Jeong Yoon-chul, tells the story of Cho-won (Cho Seung-woo of Chunhyang plays the adult version), an autistic boy with an overprotective mother (Kim Mi-suk), a resentful younger brother (Lee Gi-yeong), and a mostly absent father (Ahn Nae-sang). Cho-won doesn’t develop social skills, but he grows up with an obsessive love of running. After he snags third place in a Special Olympics-type race, his mother sets about getting him trained for a genuine marathon, and hires Yun Jung-won (Baek Seong-hyeon) to coach him. Yun is a burned out alcoholic former runner who teaches at Cho-won’s school as part of his community service. He reluctantly takes on Cho-won’s training, and these mostly comical scenes of Yun’s growing bond with the boy are a highlight of the film. Yun’s gruff manner (Cho-won starts cursing at home after training with him), brings him into conflict with the boy’s mother, who eventually decides that she’s wrong to push Cho-won to run, and that he’s only doing it to please her.

While I found Marathon hokey and unconvincing, I’m still glad I saw it. Unlike the great South Korean films I’ve seen recently (e.g. Memories of Murder and Save the Green Planet!), Marathon represents a more mainstream style of Korean filmmaking. It’s one of those uplifting, tear-jerking, inspirational sports movies, like Rocky or Seabiscuit, and to tell the truth, that is not a genre in which I am particularly interested. I can still appreciate the craft involved. I saw a user comment on IMDB comparing Marathon to Lee Chang-dong’s Oasis. I see a superficial similarity, and I think they both, sadly, condescend to their subjects, but Oasis is and gritty and disturbing, with sporadic joyous moments, while those bright moments are Marathon’s reason for being. My reductive take is that Oasis is an art film that deals with disability in an abstract way, while Marathon is a film that is concerned primarily with manipulating its audience.

The film was a big hit in South Korea, which doesn’t surprise me. It’s a skillful blend of low comedy and melodrama that expertly tugs audience heartstrings. But I have three major problems with the film. A lot of the praise the film has gotten focuses on Cho’s performance in the lead, and I just don’t think it’s that good. Cho is a likeable actor, and I find his performance ingratiating in an inappropriate way. It’s my understanding that autistic people generally don’t try to be adorable, and Cho is doing just that. It’s a demanding role, and it’s not a bad performance. It’s just that the filmmakers are more concerned with making Cho-won loveable than with being truthful.

The overemphatic score is another problem. Is it really necessary to resort to plaintive piano tinklings every time a character has a reflective moment? The score is constantly telling me, “Cry now,” or “It’s so uplifting!” and I can try to ignore it, and gauge my honest reaction to the material and how it’s being presented, but being pushed around for a while, my only response is, “Oh, shut up,” which takes me out of the movie.

Lastly, the mother’s change of heart regarding Cho-won’s racing is unconvincing. Her conflict with Yun is easy enough to fathom (though it isn’t satisfactorily resolved), and her deep-seated doubts about her own ability to care for her son are human and entirely comprehensible. But we’re never given any reason to suspect that Cho-won runs to please anyone else, or is even capable of such considerations. There’s nothing presented to justify her decision to stop him from running. It seems a contrivance, and it makes her character more of a villain than the film really needs.

Thanks partly to that plot development, the story is fairly predictable, but I was never bored with Marathon, and beyond being of interest simply for being a South Korean take on this type of film, it has some charming, comic, and moving moments. A simple tracking shot of Cho-won’s hand reaching out to brush some reeds on the side of the road as he rushes by them—a motif that’s effectively repeated later in the film—conveys more than all the overdetermined drama and the lachrymose music ever could. It’s in these small moments that the film shows glimmers of Jeong’s genuine talent as a filmmaker.

Reviewed By Josh Ralske.