ON THE EDGE - DVD review

"On the Edge" is a curious blend of mainstream and art-house filmmaking. On the one hand, it's "Rocky" for runners, with a core of clichés—like the wizened old trainer with knit cap, the estranged father-son, the soft-spoken, hard-training athlete, and the triumphant ending we've come to expect from sports films, one which even the director called "Capraesque." On the other hand it's an image-driven film, a poetic montage with dialogue kept to a minimum, replaced by a New Age score that marries images to music. And that surprising Capraesque ending? As a kind of tympanic climax to the near-constant flow of images and music that establishes a rhythm for this film not unlike the pacing and breathing of a runner, it works so well that I couldn't imagine another.

Bruce Dern stars in this 1985 Rob Nilsson film, although "starring" is probably overstated. The scenery and running itself are really the attention-grabbers. The film opens with an unabashed slice of Americana: an implacable and bearded man standing next to an American flag aboard a ferry, with the City of San Francisco receding gradually in the background and, by the end of the title sequence, the image of Mt. Tamalpais erupting from the sea.

Set in Northern California, the film chronicles the unlikely comeback of long-distance runner Wes Holman (Dern), who, 20 years ago, was barred from competition right before the Olympics when he admitted that he accepted the gift of airline tickets and urged other runners to "come clean" as well, to eliminate what Nilsson in his commentary termed the "shamateurism" of the sport.

It turns out you can go home again. When he lands, Holman heads right for the 2 a.m. Club, where he approaches his old mentor, Elmo (John Marley), and tells him he's going to train for the Cielo-Sea. The runner grew up in his father's scrap yard not far from the official starting line for the second oldest race in the country, and he had always enjoyed running in the race. Though the name is fictional, Cielo-Sea is based on the Dipsea Race from Mill Valley over the ridges of Mt. Tamalpais to Stinson Beach, which has been run since 1906. It's the second-oldest race in the nation, after the Boston Marathon, and as such it draws runners from all over the world. It's a grueling race that has runners sprinting up steep wooden steps on the mountainside, running through rainforest over logs and under overhanging branches, slogging through mud, and negotiating perilous descents down steep ravines full of loose rock. The scenery is gorgeous, and that's part of the attraction for runners . . . and viewers.

Elmo leads Holman to an abandoned and partially sunken clam dredger, where he tells the runner he can live for free. So there, with the water level rising on the floor as the tides roll in, he sleeps on a table and walks out onto the half-submerged ship to contemplate. Coach Elmo tells him there are three aspects of this 7 1/2 mile race—philosophy, strategy, and training—and this watery retreat gives him the space for reflection. But the condition Elmo lays out is that Holman must go to see his estranged father, Flash (Bill Bailey). We learn in the commentary that this political-minded character was in real-life a man who was a former member of the American Communist Party who was blacklisted because he refused to name names. He stood up to Franco and was an activist labor leader who became a member of the Communist Party, we learn, because the Republicans and Democrats didn't care enough about workers back then. Bailey brings his natural curmudgeonly fire to the role, though with a macaw as his shoulder-perching companion it's not hard to have flashbacks to the tough-talking Baretta and his Cockatoo.

"On the Edge" has a documentary feel to it, and the realism comes largely from the real people who were used during filming. The runners in the Cielo-Sea are real top-ranked athletes, Dipsea winners, and race officials, and Dern himself has been an avid runner since high school—an ultramarathoner who goes through a yearly training regimen. Director Nilsson ran the Dipsea as a teen, and co-writer Rob Kissin, is a national-class 10-K runner who introduced the director to some of the top runners at the time the film was made, and a number of recognizable faces and names turn up.

Though Holman is 43, age isn't the only challenge to winning his hometown race. It turns out that he never got reinstated, and the new race director—someone who's promoting the pants off this thing so that it becomes so commercial the runners are getting concerned—is a sticker for the rules and won't let Holman sign up. Coincidentally, the director, Owen Riley (Jim Haynie), happens to own the runner's shoe shop in town and also was Holman's roommate during the Olympic trials. And Holman suspects he's the fellow who took airplane tickets from his room and turned them over to Olympic officials.

That's the off-course conflict, because the father-son relationship isn't all that estranged after all. But the real conflict, of course, comes during the race itself, and it's an exciting sequence that packs more than a few surprises. Despite the familiar clichés, "On the Edge" is a loving tribute to running and a film that even people like myself (who only run if someone's chasing them) can also enjoy.

Video:
Unfortunately, the film shows its age and its independent roots. There's a slight graininess, blurriness, and haloing, especially in the first act. The picture either cleans up a bit or our eyes adjust by the second act. It's filmed in 1.33:1 but letterboxed at 1.85, so people with widescreen televisions will need to watch at the 4:3 expanded ratio to avoid distortion. The colors themselves reflect Northern California—an earthy, Birkenstocks palette that's compatible with the scruffy Holman and this gritty race.

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo soundtrack also betrays the film's independent roots, with a gentle hiss that washes over the dialogue and Foley effects. Nilsson uses sound impressionistically, rather than naturally—footsteps are louder than they would normally be, for example—and that goes a long way toward creating a tone that contributes to our sense of the film as coming from a runner's point-of-view.

Extras:
"On the Edge" has some surprisingly good features for an independent film. The "director's featurette" is really longer and more substantial than the name suggests, though it does indeed spotlight Nilsson. He appears on-camera in interviews filmed just for this release, but there is also some nifty archival footage of him and others. There's Bailey talking to Barbara Magid, who won the Dipsea, and even footage of Bailey testifying in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. There's also footage of Dern before the film was made, talking about his own training regimen in detail, and earlier interviews with the director.

The commentary by Nilsson is also quite good, but there's some overlapping with the director's featurette. He admits that this film used the more mainstream tripod shots more so than in his other films, but pretty succinctly summarizes his own view of filmmaking: that each film needs 1) a human story, 2) a visual style, and 3) an exalted sense of a location. More than an hour of comments that follow about details behind the film and about the characters, that says a lot about the look and feel of "On the Edge."

I talked at length with Nilsson about his Direct Action philosophy of filmmaking, and how "On the Edge" is atypical. For a DVD Town "extra," click here.

Bottom Line:
On the commentary, Rob Nilsson says that he wanted to do this film because no movie—not even "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner"—had managed to capture the life of a runner from the runner's perspective. "On the Edge" certainly does that, with a blend of music, images, and runner's point-of-view photography which establishes a rhythm that continues until the film's satisfying climax.