“The Runners”

   As someone who loves running, I immediately stopped at the videos when I saw this one entitled, “The Runners.” I thought the video would focus on the lives of runners and their routines, health habits, and overall technique. What I got, instead, was a very interesting documentary surrounding several individuals’ lives and their thoughts on life and their personal experiences so far. I really enjoyed this video and how open these strangers were to answering open-ended life questions. I thought the video was very beautiful in it’s own way. The approach to ask strangers personal questions through an ambush technique paid off and evoked such sincere emotion allowing us to see so many lives at once. Unlike the e-book, which claims that ambush techniques lead viewers to believe the subject is hiding something, I personally think this was the perfect technique. Obviously people will be reluctant to share personal issues, but most people sincerely answered the questions they were asked and left me with new perspectives on my own life. In particular, I was struck by the woman without children when she said to “hold on to the present because it’s all we have.” It was never her intention, or plan, to never settle down and have kids and while she is seemingly upset about this aspect of her life, she simply answers that, “that’s just the way life is sometimes.”

    This short film intertwines with the idea from the e-book in the sense that it was all very unexpected.  I doubt many people expected the film to share such in depth personal stories, and even the small summaries on the page where the movie was located claim that the description “does a huge injustice to the film and its makers.” The amount of content the filmmakers are able to put in a short eleven- minute video is quite priceless.  The form of this video is what really left an impression on me, because just like the e-book, it plays around with many different locations, people, pacing, and music to keep the audience interested in the storyline. The way the filmmakers managed to sew several stories together at once was nicely laid out. I recall one scene where one story was being filmed and the camera passed a tree and on the other side of the tree was a new story. Elements like this enable people to be interested and it keeps our definition of a “regular documentary “ with the “voice-of-God” to a minimum. The short film as a whole was definitely one of the best I’ve ever watched and it really does make you reevaluate your own life.