Marathon

This is a mixed presentation of Biju Viswanath’s film, with everything suffering from a substandard picture quality. No one is helped the film’s soundtrack losing synch a couple of times and by what looks like a poor transfer in places, undermining the cinematography Viswanath’s trying to achieve. This is must be a disappointment, given how he professes a love of 35mm film in the first extra here - a television interview with producer Richard Harteis and screenwriter Celia de Fréine. This is a short interview filmed before principle photography and everyone is enthusiastic about working together.

There’s another interview conducted by Viswanath and Harteis with marathon runner John Kelly. The cheap handheld, shaky filming is off-putting at first, but John has an interesting take on how the mindset and endurance battle of running a marathon applies across life and its various battles. Clearly this is a theme that Viswanath and Harteis want highlighted for their movie, even though Kelly sometimes doesn’t seem sure which film they might be talking about.

There’s also a short ‘documentary’, or promo, for the William Meredith Foundation and a trailer, but the key extra here as got to be footage of Meredith reading at the Library of Congress. Polite, succinct and approachable, it’s pleasing to see in action the man that everyone so battled for and with.