ENDURANCE A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): 0
The name says it all.
You'll check your watch frequently waiting for something to happen in Leslie Woodhead's abysmal documentary, ENDURANCE, and you'll still be checking it when the closing credits roll. If there were a cinematic dullness scale, this movie would reside just one notch ahead of the rating for a blank screen.
The movie attempts to tell the story of Ethiopian long-distance runner Haile Gebrselassie, whom Runner's World magazine called "the greatest distance runner of all time." Gebrselassie deserves much better than this lame attempt at a movie.
The best one can say of the film is that it undoubtedly has good intentions. But, regardless of the filmmaker's plans, the result is a docu-drama that robs the viewers of their time as they stare at a movie without a single compelling moment. Almost all of the story concerns the minutia of Gebrselassie's life on the farm as he grows up. Even when, toward the end, we finally get to see him race, the movie saps all of the life and vitality out of the scenes. His big victory at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta is drained of energy by the editing of the film and the sound.
Most of the movie consists of a badly reenacted story of his life. The filmmakers, incorrectly, assume that the film's images as so interesting that they can get away with having no narration and almost no dialog. This is a huge mistake.
An even larger error is made in the amount of time allocated to completely uninteresting activities. We watch the young Gebrselassie as he sips an orange soda, flips through pages of an atlas, milks a cow, plows the fields, reads by the fire and hauls water up from the stream. The camera dwells on each activity as if we had never seen it before. We get the point that Gebrselassie grew up in poverty, but do we have to devote the first 80% of the movie to it?
The filmmakers haven't a clue as to how to tell a coherent story. The confusing one they lay before us never draws us in or makes us care. As we watch, the people in it are stripped of their humanity by the film's lackluster and patronizing presentation.
Only the African music breaks up the monotony. Although it sounds good, one suspects that they could have played absolutely anything, and it would have been welcome.
If the American Film Institute ever compiles a list of the worst documentaries ever made, ENDURANCE would have to be considered a top contender.
ENDURANCE runs 1:23. The film is mainly in Ethiopian with English subtitles. It is rated G as there is nothing to offend anyone.
My son Jeffrey, age 10, complained that the film was confusing and contained no plot or point. He gave it 0 stars and said that he found nothing interesting in the entire movie.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
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