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The people at Disney have rarely seemed too interested in documentary material that isn't either self-aggrandizing or nature-oriented -- Invasion: Florida! or Ernie the Lonesome Badger. Give them due credit in this instance, though, for putting a more contemporary spin on their fabled capacity to be uplifting and family-suitable without turning a subject into the sort of treacly thing that makes even the most stable adult want to kick a puppy. This dramatized take on the life of Haile Gebrsellasie, who has been called "the best long-distance runner in history," is a big, gorgeous, stunningly photographed homage to both the beauty of the human form in motion and one person's tireless lifelong pursuit of a dream.
"Yeah, sure, beat us over the head. First you slam Angelina Jolie and then you try to drag us into a G-rated Disney documentary about an unpronounceable African cult-figure from a sport we couldn't give a rat's pancreas about. Hoser."
No, really. If nothing else, this movie is worth checking out for all the magnificent scenery that never turned up in I Dreamed of Africa. It's much more than a travelogue filmed by two award-winning directors, though.
Following an opening credit sequence of Gebrsellasie -- tell you what, for convenience sake, and to save fingers that cramp as easily typing his surname as the tongue does trying to say it, let's call him Haile -- of Haile's graceful, efficient gait across the hills and fields of Ethiopian savanna, Endurance begins with the opening laps of the men's 10,000 meter race at the '96 Olympics in Atlanta. No sooner does this most grueling of all track events get started, than the story leaves the care of Bud Greenspan, whose many Olympic documentaries have earned him Lifetime Achievement recognition from the Directors Guild of America, and is handed over to Leslie Woodhead, whose Bosnian exposé A Cry from the Grave was a hit on the festival circuit.
Flashing back to Haile's childhood in 1980, Woodhead uses unknown local acting talent, including members of Haile's family, to depict a critical period in the aspiring young athlete's life. The kid had it tough; he was the eighth of ten children being raised in a one-room mud hut. Every day he ran six miles to school, barefoot, clutching his books under one arm, then ran home, spent three more hours carrying water, did more chores on the family's portion of a communal farm under the stern taskmastering of his sometimes abusive father, and if there was any time left before going to bed, he went out and ran some more just for fun. (Throw in marauding Apaches and a grizzly bear, and that sounds like a story my dad still tries to foist on me now and then when he thinks I've had an easy life.) Jump ahead several years and Haile, now playing himself, is finally discovered by a coach and persuaded to move to urban Addis Ababa to train with a running club. By the time we cut back to Greenspan's actual footage of the Olympic 10k, Haile looks so relaxed while battling a team of Kenyan supermen he'd appear to be effortlessly coasting did the clock not reflect a 4:20/mile pace.
I could tell you how it ended four years ago. Or you could look up the results for yourself. Suffice it to say that, when Gebrsellassie returned to his homeland that summer there were a million fans waiting to greet him.
Such casual recreation of real events could have easily gone astray, but what director Woodhead presents in his, the majority share, of the film is more illustration than narrative. The sparing dialogue, accompanied by a soundtrack of Ethiopian music that sometimes borrows its cadence from the rhythm of Haile's footsteps, is simple and unforced, letting the setting tell the story. The portrait that emerges is of a supremely determined, spiritual young man with unbounded joy and talent for the purest, most elemental pursuit in all of sport. B
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