The Run review – ultra-marathon documentary trips up
A film charting Pat Farmer’s 4,600km dash across India piles on the platitudes, reducing an amazing odyssey to nippy travelogue
The Indian ascetic tradition can add another name to its ranks: former Australian parliamentary secretary and ultra-marathon runner Pat Farmer, whose 4,600km “Spirit of India” run in 2016 from the subcontinent’s southern tip to Kashmir is chronicled here. That’s 80km – two marathons – a day, for 64 days. If that, often undertaken in 80% humidity, doesn’t sound masochistic enough, Farmer’s social schedule (the run is to promote girls’ education) would finish any normal man off: he attends more than 750 “events”, many on the hoof, during this time.
India can’t fail to provide colour en route, but director Anupam Sharma’s nippy travelogue format is strictly passing through. Barely any Indians are interviewed about what Farmer’s feat means to them, and the alternating asphalt-pounding and meet-and-greets eventually stretch the bounds of documentary patience. Farmer himself is so indomitable – even a bout of stomach flu barely causes him to break stride – that he isn’t that compelling a subject.
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