Perspectives on Documentary Filmmaking

Subjectivity and Story in Documentary:

The Barkley Marathons: Where Dreams Go to Die

In their manifesto “Beyond Story,” Alexandra Juhasz & Alisa Lebow declare, “We need documentary. We need it to help interpret the world.”[footnoteRef:1] The authors condemn cinematic, fictional storytelling as inherently polluted by commercialism. Conventional commercial filmmaking, they say, takes individuals out of the communities which produced them, thus alienating them from the economic, social, historical, and other material forces in the eyes of the audience. In other words, documentaries have a political power to convey truth that conventional cinema does not by rooting narratives in fact rather than story. In stark contrast, Trinh Minh-ha, “The Totalizing Quest of Meaning,” argues: “There is no such thing as documentary… Truth and meaning: the two are likely to be equated with one another. Yet, what is put forth as truth is often nothing more than a meaning.”[footnoteRef:2] In other words, although documentaries purport to convey absolute truth, in fact, they convey a very specific version of that truth and should not be confused with objective reality. [1: Alexandra Juhasz & Alisa Lebow, “Beyond Story: An Online, Community-Based Manifesto,” World Records, vol. 2, no. 3 (2018): 1.] [2: Trinh Minh-ha, “The Totalizing Quest of Meaning,” in Theorizing Documentary, (New York: Routledge:1993), 90-91.]

The 2018 documentary The Barkley Marathons: Where Dreams Go to Die, directed by Ethan Newberry encompasses elements of what Juhasz and Lebow both celebrate and despise. On one hand, it is very much not a Hollywood documentary. It is produced by a very small filmmaker, taking advantage of the new availability of YouTube as a way to disseminate content. It is about a relatively obscure sport (ultra-running), chronicling one of the most difficult events in the sport. The Barkley Marathons is such a challenging race, few people ever finish it. On the other hand, it is very much a story-based event, following the attempt of the Canadian runner Gary Robbins to finish the race. Rather than focusing on a larger social and political context, which Juhasz and Lebow see as the radical potential of documentaries, it is a story which also has parallels with many popular fictional narratives—not just that of a sports film which focuses on a big race or game, but also the idea of human beings against nature.

Another distinct feature of the Barkley Marathons is its cultural context. It takes place in a very rural area of Tennessee. As many of the runners are based internationally, or outside the rural South, there is a strange mystique surrounding the organizer “Laz Lake” Cantrell, who is portrayed as a kind of mystical figure in the film, uttering obscure phrases in the background. Unlike most conventional running races, the start of the race is uncertain (people camp out, waiting for the signal for when it starts at the sound of the blowing of a conch, which could be at any time Laz wants for it to begin). Navigation is difficult, and there is no clear path through the woods, and the various loops of the course can be treacherous. The narrator ominously warns the viewer about the dangers of the race, as more and more runners drop out of the race. Very few runners have ever finished the race, and many become obsessed with finishing it, returning again and again after subjecting themselves to grueling training.