As a runner from Nottingham, myself, and having seen the reviews I bought the DVD and just found the film a little disappointing. Can't put my finger on why. I thought the editing at times was bad. The race at the end was an anti-climax. Strange that there wasn't more angst between the two teams.
That said, Tom Courtenay is brilliant, as is James Bolam. Was also great to see a lot of other British actors who would go onto more success.
why did you think the race was an anti climax?
shareI was thinking: Hooray, he has his pride ...and he has the rest of his life to think about what a stupid decision he made. Gee, he really showed them.
That was his only chance out of his crappy life.
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winning the race would not get him out of the "machine the he hates so much" any sooner. He knows that he would end up working a job just like his father, leaving behind an unloving wife who will spend his life on a television. He is the existentialist hero. He realizes that it does not matter what he does.
I personally loved the ending, although I knew exactly how it was going to end.
Exactly. Winning the race would even have him *acknowledge* the system and the 'reform' ideology that he despised. In the end, it comes down to a personal, mental fight between the runner and his warden - that is clearly shown at the end of the race, when they meet each other's eyes.
The runner chooses not to become a rabbit running for his carrot. Now, that is not what most rabbits would choose - as can be read in the comments here.
The point that this film is making is that within society, individuals do have a choice in the things they choose for themselves, even at the cost of great personal sacrifices and of not being understood by most. Or, like I read somewhere else, there is pride in *choosing to fail* rather then to 'win' on other people's terms that are not your own.
I would not formulate it as 'He realizes that it does not matter what he does'. It *does* matter, even within the existentialist ideology, that *life essentially implies choice* instead of necessarily running down an all-too narrow pathway (a fate most people choose for themselves).
Some say it would be 'rational' for the runner to have chosen his release from prison over his stubbornness. This supposed primate of 'rationality' implies necessity rather than free choice - and clearly demonstrates existentialisms criticism towards rationality.
Of course we want our criminals to 'get on the right track again' and 'better their lives'. Yet it would be foolish to deny that this is no physical necessity - every man has choices to make, and is entitled to them. The warden never realises this.
Michel Couzijn
I loved the interplay between the teams, and was glad it wasn't a 1962 version of "You Got Served." Two groups of young men, at a sporting competition. There was a time and culture that didn't value trashtalk, or cheating, or poor sportsmanship. Today's competition seems to be all about disrespect, and not performance.
A nice bit of business, the two best runners exiting to the field "after you", "no, after you." And then, at the race's end, when the second-place runner hesitates to acknowledge Colin's right to victory by superior performance, and Colin bows to gesture, "no, after you." Gold~!
The short story was great, everyone who enjoyed the film (and many who didn't) would love it.
That last "after you" was gold indeed.
Regarding the ending... Colin knows he would have gone back to the workhouse, and the private schoolboy to his life of opportunity, whatever the result. Anyone who needed his act of defiance to 'achieve' anything, or bring change, or improve his life, doesn't understand how the world really works. Colin gets it. As an act of pure defiance it was totally without self-delusion. It was wonderful. And it would have felt amazing.
The ending was the best bit.
How dull would it have been if he'd simply won the race?
It made me think of the end of A Clockwork Orange when Alex sells out to promote the government, but couldn't care less. Sort of an antithesis to Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, whereas the whole point of Collin losing the race was keeping your soul.
We see this with cynical, modern eyes that losing the race, his "stance", was probably useless. It's so easy to look back at the 60's idealism and laugh - which is why Alex in Clockwork Orange was actually an antihero in it's own era. Collin was an antihero as a modern 60's outsider with noble intentions of self, and the freedom of self the 60's tried to illustrate.
It seems like all the 60's movies were like this to some degree - it was always about some kind of conviction of the self. The end of Easy Rider - "we blew it." The end of La Vallee when they "make it." Etc.
What a great era for movies though!
My reaction was closest to yours. I thought it was a great film; but I'm not sure it makes a great case for his protest. After all, soon after he gets there, he tells the others at dinner that 'doing a runner' (running away) and getting punished makes no sense. Better to pretend to kow-tow to the director of the borstal and make the sentence as easy as possible. Ultimately, he doesn't take his own advice and condemns himself to the worst work and perhaps a longer sentence. For most of the film, he comes across as someone smart enough to realize that what he feels about winning the race inside, doesn't have to conform to why the director thought he should win ('glory' for the borstal, triumph over the toffs, etc.) Then he goes and screws himself.
If indeed the book goes further and Colin delves further into crime, his 'loss' comes across much less as a protest than a defeat.
I agree with anyone who says it was stupid of Colin to deliberately lose the race. However, I will go on record as saying I like the movie and I like the ending.
So how do I reconcile those two apparently contradictory statements? A lot of viewers make Colin out to be an existentialist hero, that he was a hero for choosing to lose instead of winning what may be regarded as someone else's contest. I don't buy into that. My interpretation is that the movie is showing us that it was indeed a stupid act. Even as I sympathize with Colin as a character throughout the movie (though not condoning his crimes) he is making a bad decision. That's the point.
Did viewers in the 60's really see Colin as a hero for bucking the system that was using him?
I'm not British, but I wondered if the film was commenting on what caused defeatism and a feeling of powerlessness to creep into the British psyche. Were class divisions always so bitter, or was it the two world wars that caused the working class to see themselves as hard done by, little more than cannon fodder for the rich and powerful? Notice the boys in the reform school always seem to be working on gas masks from the war.
For what it's worth, the written version doesn't end where the film does---Colin does the rest of his time and gets out of Borstal, only to go back to robbery as his way of making a living. The only change from pre- to post-Borstal is that he tries to pull his jobs more intelligently.
shareI'm not British, but I wondered if the film was commenting on what caused defeatism and a feeling of powerlessness to creep into the British psyche. Were class divisions always so bitter, or was it the two world wars that caused the working class to see themselves as hard done by, little more than cannon fodder for the rich and powerful? Notice the boys in the reform school always seem to be working on gas masks from the war.
What are you blithering on about? Britain was not in depression in the 1930's. Recovery post-ww2 was difficult because of America's punishing repayment scheme with high interest rates. We don't have a caste system and to suggest so is deeply offensive.
Ever tried, ever failed?
No matter.
Try again, fail again.
Fail better.
As a runner from Nottingham, myself ... I bought the DVD and just found the film a little disappointing. ... The race at the end was an anti-climax. Strange that there wasn't more angst between the two teams.