The Long Run

The background to one of these dramas of endeavour and endurance is ably portrayed in The Long Run. In this film, the locale is South Africa, not the Philippines. Instead of steaming jungle, it's city roads and pollution. The quest, however, isn't just survival, it's winning. With exercise, winning means training, and training means coaching. Armin Mueller-Stahl plays Berry Bohmer, a brickyard employee coaching a team of runners. Encountering a young woman jogging, he sees immense promise in her. After some initial difficulties, Christine [Nthati Moshesh] accepts him as her trainer. The goal is winning the Comrades Marathon, a gruelling 90 km run across Natal Province, South Africa.

It's not a straightforward enterprise. Christine, a homeless illegal immigrant, moves in with Berry, scandalising the neighbourhood. It's hard to decide which of them is more prim in the relationship. His own situation becomes precarious when the brickyard owner wants to advance the cause of Black African management. Christine, although a natural runner, has no disciplined experience. Berry must start her at the beginning. Director Jean Stewart balances these disparate forces with finesse. From the opening scene, the tension of this race is vividly obvious. "Forget about the pain!", Berry tells his team, but you are confronted with the stress involved in this enterprise throughout the film. Whatever Moshesh's running experience in real life, she admirably demonstrates her abilities as she paces out bush roads and dodges coppers. Stewart places every scene in proper context, from distant views along rural tracks to the race's conclusion in Durban. Long distance shots of the Natal countryside impart a strong sense of the universality of distance running.

Finally, after no few tribulations, the race is run. The key point is Cowie's, a hill rising beyond a deceptive flat track. "It has killed thousands!", says Berry. Christine, determined, has her own approach. The race opens before sunrise, but "it'll get hot later today" intones the announcer. As the day begins, after the race starts, Stewart captures the easy mood of those first minutes. As time passes and the pace picks up, the full scope of the challenge is manifested. Runners are seen beside the track, crumpled with exhaustion. Christine's own support team members falter. There's nothing foregone about the conclusion - remember Cool Running? [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]


More than just about a race, it is about South Africa today   June 14, 2003
Linda Linguvic (New York City)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

This 2000 South African film is about a 56-mile marathon run called The Comrades. It's also about a former marathon runner, now in his sixties, who never made it and has spent a lifetime as a manager in a brick factory. His avocation though is coaching other athletes. The German actor, Armin Mueller-Stahl is cast in this role of Barry, and the story centers around him. He's a white man but yet much beloved by the young black factory workers he coaches. And when he is fired from his job to be replaced by a politically correct black man, his running team is heartbroken.

Circumstances, however, bring a young Namibian woman named Kristina, played by Ntahta Moshesh, into his life. He has observed her running on the road and sees her potential as an athlete. He saves her from being deported, brings her into his home, and starts to train her. As he's a widower and lives alone, this make his neighbors raise their eyebrows.

All does not go well with the training however. Kristina resents him running her life and there is lots of conflict. There's also conflict with the four young African men he had been training. And the new manager who replaced him has tribal prejudices of his own and also begins to romance Kristina.

This film gave me a good chance to view the South African landscape and see some of the recent shifts in racial politics there. The acting was uniformly good. And, even though I found the film too long even at 113 minutes, I was completely involved, holding my breath at the racing scenes, which were actually quite predictable. However, the setting and the theme made up for it all. Recommended.