REVIEWS
62 | Sight&Sound | November 2019
Reviewed by Kim Newman
The title of this lightly likeable dramedy is so
on the nose that it has to serve double duty
as a metaphor for the way the protagonist
forces herself to change her life. It’s an odd
circumstance that a small-scale, indie-style
film should come along after higher-profile
star vehicles such as Young Adult (2011) and
Trainwreck (2015) have covered similar ground,
offering comic-pathetic heroines fully as
immature and struggling with responsibility
as any Adam Sandler or Seth Rogen character.
Jillian Bell, a scene-stealer in 22 Jump Street
(2014) and other mainstream comedies, goes the
distance to present protagonist Brittany Forgler
as a complicated archetype of barbed-tongue
self-loathing who’s trying desperately to lose
weight and switch track to a healthier lifestyle.
While criticising love interest Jern as a
‘man-baby’, Brittany blithely ignores her own
failings, even after she’s taken up running. In
the film’s toughest scene, when she’s full of
self-pity after missing her chance to run the
New York marathon because of a stress fracture,
she ruins her kindly brother-in-law’s birthday
party by verbally tearing into an overweight
woman who has the temerity to appear happy.
Even when she does overcome most of her
shortcomings and runs her marathon, she still
treats the supportive people around her (fellow
runner Seth, who’s getting in shape because
his child has noticed he’s less athletic than his
husband; Catherine, who’s battling a nasty
divorce-custody case that has brought up her own
long-resolved addiction issues) as stooges, in just
the same way that her shallow flatmate Gretchen,
who gobbles pizza but remains a size zero, treats
her as a ‘fat sidekick’. Writer-director Paul Downs
Colaizzo, who was inspired by a ‘real Brittany’
(seen in the end credits), includes a few telling
cutaways to remind us there’s a world outside
Brittany’s problems that she never quite notices.
It’s a paradox of all ‘man-baby’ and ‘female
trainwreck’ comedy that the arc of the plot
involves someone shaping up – almost invariably
to secure a romcom happy ending, often with
a real child thrown into the mix – while the
entertainment value comes from their bad,
irresponsible or even unforgivable behaviour.
Brittany Runs a Marathon gives Bell a lot of smart
Reviewed by Jordan Cronk
Spoiler alert: this review reveals a plot twist
One of the strangest American films in recent
memory, Aaron Schimberg’s Chained for Life is
pleasing in ways that may surprise many viewers.
Proudly left of centre in both style and subject,
the Brooklyn-based writer-director’s sophomore
feature has little in common with the work
of his New York peers, embracing neither self-
seriousness nor disaffection but rather a playful
inquisitiveness that can feel strikingly out of step
with the academic tone of so much contemporary
indie cinema. Which isn’t to say that Chained for
Life doesn’t have a lot on its mind; in fact, it may
bite off more than it can chew, but there’s a certain
thrill to be had in watching Schimberg and his
cast attempt something so defiantly offbeat.
Set in and around an abandoned hospital in
upstate New York, the story centres on Mabel
(Jess Weixler), a struggling 30-year-old actress
working on a low-budget horror film with a
supporting cast filled out by a group of circus
performers. Her co-star Rosenthal (Adam Pearson)
has an extreme facial deformity, something
their high-minded European director (Charlie
Korsmo) seems all too willing to exploit for
either extreme pathos or grotesque thrills.
(Pearson, a British actor best known for his
performance in Jonathan Glazer’s 2013 film
Under the Skin, suffers from neurofibromatosis.)
In the film-within-the-film, Mabel’s character,
a blind hospital patient named Freda, grows to
love Rosenthal despite his affliction. Meanwhile,
during the course of production, the two actors
tentatively strike up a friendship, with Mabel
fielding questions about the film’s ethics as she
slowly comes to grips with her own unspoken
anxieties about working with Rosenthal.
Chained for Life, of course, opens itself up to
these same criticisms. Alongside Rosenthal, the
cast of sideshow performers include conjoined
twins, a giant, a dwarf and a bearded lady,
among others. Schimberg’s depiction of these
characters is tender and even humorous at
times, but never mean-spirited. In self-reflexive
fashion, the film – which begins with a quote
from Pauline Kael extolling the virtues of
beautiful actors – asks the viewer to interrogate
commonly held notions of beauty, and how
cinema fosters and perpetuates such standards.
As with the neo-Lynchian stylings of
Schimberg’s first feature Go Down Death (2013),
Chained for Life doesn’t mask its influences or
antecedents. (“One of us, one of us,” a character
taunts at one point, in a clear nod to Todd
Browning’s 1932 circus-set Freaks.) As a movie
comic business, but her character’s humour is
signalled from the first as a way of deflecting
pain – and is often funny because it’s so mistimed
that the people around her don’t get the joke.
She resists being labelled the funny fat girl,
but keeps retreating into her stereotype shell,
even when she’s lost significant weight.
Colaizzo refrains from jokes about Brittany’s
struggles as a beginner runner, and doesn’t have
much time for the ‘serious athletes’ or for poking
fun at the rituals and looks of the other runners.
Urban marathons aren’t entirely uncontroversial
- one shot catches the detritus of plastic water
bottles left behind. Brittany insists the marathon
isn’t a race or a competition but an achievement
- “The point is to finish it.” Again, Colaizzo
admires and supports this – but has just enough
distance from his heroine to show that her change
of lifestyle, reassessing herself before moving
on to her relationships, is a work in progress
rather than a mountain to be conquered.
Brittany Runs a Marathon
USA/Canada 2019
Director: Paul Downs Colaizzo
Certificate 15 103m 52s
Chained for Life
USA 2018
Director: Aaron Schimberg
Certificate 15 91m 30s
New York, present day. Twenty-eight-year-old Brittany
Forgler consults a doctor in the hope of scoring a
prescription for Adderall, and is told she needs to lose
weight. Inspired by Catherine, a neighbour she has
previously disparaged, she takes up running. She loses
some weight and makes friends with Seth, a gay man
who is also a novice runner, and Catherine. Brittany, who
works front of house in a small theatre, takes a second
job as a dog sitter and – after an argument with her
thin, vain flatmate Gretchen – moves into a mansion
that she has to share with Jern, the nightshift sitter,
with whom she starts a stuttering relationship. Seth
and Catherine run the New York marathon, but Brittany
misses it, having overtrained and suffered a stress
fracture. Feeling sorry for herself, she returns home to
her sister in Philadelphia, and lashes out at those who
try to be nice to her. She reassesses her life and returns
to New York. The following year she runs the marathon.
Produced by
Matthew Plouffe
Tobey Maguire
Margot Hand
Written by
Paul Downs Colaizzo
Director of
Photography
Seamus Tierney
Editor
Casey Brooks
Production Designer
Erin Magill
Music
Duncan Thum
Costume Designer
Stacey Berman
©Brittany Movie, LLC
Production
Companies
Amazon Studios and
Material Pictures
present a Material
Pictures/Picture
Films production
A film by Paul
Downs Colaizzo
Supported by the
Sundance Institute
Feature Film Program
Executive Producers
Richard Weinberg
Jillian Bell
Paul Downs Colaizzo
Cast
Jillian Bell
Brittany Forgler
Michaela Watkins
Catherine
Utkarsh Ambudkar
Jern
Lil Rel Howery
Demetrius
Micah Stock
Seth
Alice Lee
Gretchen
Jennifer Dundas
Shannon
Patch Darragh
Doctor Falloway
In Colour
Distributor
Republic Film
Distribution
Climb every mountain: Jillian Bell
Credits and Synopsis
Offbeat: Adam Pearson, Jess Weixler
A RT
PRODUCTION
CLIENT
SUBS
REPRO OP
VERSION
Reviews, 5
